


How to Live Here

by explosionshark, TippyTypewriter



Series: How to Live Here [5]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Ambiguous Relationships, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining, OT3, Polyamory, Slow Burn, amberpricefield
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-30 04:38:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 59,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12100887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/explosionshark/pseuds/explosionshark, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TippyTypewriter/pseuds/TippyTypewriter
Summary: “C’mon,” Chloe smiles, hopeful and sweet. “You’re having a good time, right?”Max sees Rachel’s head tilt out of the corner of her eye, knows they’re both looking at her.“Yeah,” Max says.A great time, actually.“Then stay,” Rachel says, bumping Max gently with her shoulder.---Max, Chloe, and Rachel learn how to be good for each other. It takes a while. It's worth it.





	1. After Hours

**Author's Note:**

> okay! we're back!
> 
> please note that this work is part of a larger series. all future updates will take place in this story, but there's essential reading material in the 4 prior releases, so please catch up there before reading onward. you'll have a much better time that way.
> 
> chapter title from "after hours" by we are scientists. fic title from "how to live here" by good luck

The first thing Max notices when she and Warren enter the dining hall just after six is the massive line running up to the register, unusual for a Friday night, but Max figures this is what they get for arriving in the middle of the dinner rush. She usually does a better job of avoiding the crowd, preferring to arrive at the start of dining hours or later, just before closing. Tonight she’d let Warren talk her into a cram session for Monday’s upcoming science quiz, one that had run longer than she’d planned on when he had busted out his laptop to show her “a few funny videos.”

It’s a dumb thing to be annoyed about, Max knows, so she tries to stuff the feeling down. She must be doing a pretty poor job of it, though, judging by the eagerness with which Warren volunteers to go fetch their dinners. Max wants to protest, doesn’t want to wrestle with what it means or doesn’t mean to let Warren buy her dinner, but she also doesn’t want to seem cranky — or worse, to embarrass them both by presuming his intent — so she lets him go without much fuss.

The next thing Max notices is Rachel Amber, perched daintily on the edge of a table, laughing along with a crowd of moony eyed boys and stealing french fries off their trays. She looks way better than anyone should be able to under fluorescent lights this harsh; smooth skin glowing, hair tousled but not messy, jeans that look like they’ve been through a lawnmower yet _still_ seem more elegant on her than anything Max has owned in her life. 

Rachel looks up after a moment, catching Max’s eye across the cafeteria and grinning, wide and slow, with teeth. Max feels her cheeks flush at having been caught staring, but Rachel keeps smiling, dimples creasing her cheeks. There’s this hint of mischief at the corner of her mouth, like they’re sharing some joke, some secret. If they are, it’s lost on Max, but she returns Rachel’s smile all the same; tentatively at first, but wider when Rachel shoots her an amiable wink.

Max breaks eye contact first, ducking her head and chuckling to herself, feeling a little flushed. She bites her lip a little to regain her composure, surprised when she glances back up to see Rachel sliding off the table and picking her way through the crowded dining hall to reach Max.

“Hey,” Rachel breathes, planting her palms flat on the table and leaning down close, smile radiant and playful. “Come here often?”

Max giggles again a little nervously. She remembers, distantly, an off-hand comment made in Chloe’s room about not being prepared for the physical reality of being in the room with someone like Rachel. There’s this energy about her, something bright and urgent; she’s fire, powerful and beautiful, sucking all the oxygen out of the room. Weeks later, Max still isn’t sure how to handle being the center of Rachel Amber’s focus.

It’s been happening more and more since that time in the bathroom. Max’s palms still itch at the memory of Rachel’s gaze locked on her through the mirror, the shrewd purse of her lips. It had felt like showing up to a pop quiz for a class she’d never signed up for in the first place.

Whatever the test had been, Max had apparently passed, judging by the effort Rachel’s been making to get to know her since, attention shifting from distinctly scrutinizing to casual, inquisitive. They had paired up for a project in AP English earlier in the week. Rachel’s dropped by to study in her dorm a few nights, and this morning she surprised Max outside of class with a banana nut muffin.

Max seizes on the memory now, how at ease she’d felt this morning breaking off chunks of baked goods onto a napkin to pass back to Rachel when Mrs. Hoida wasn’t looking, and uses it to steady her voice when she answers, “Hi, Rachel.”

Rachel gives a little half wave and looks at Max expectantly.

“Oh, do you want to sit?” Max asks, feeling awkward having to offer. She might not know Rachel well yet, but you barely had to spend any time at all with her to understand that Rachel didn't wait for anyone’s permission to go wherever she pleased, whenever she pleased.

It was a quality in her that Max liked more than she expected to. On most people, it would probably be too bold. _Invasive._ But Rachel has a way of making you want her attention, in any form. It’s disarming and exciting and probably more than a little dangerous, but Max thinks it’s something she should probably get used to.

“No, I was actually thinking we should get out of here,” Rachel says, reeling Max back into the present before she can get too lost in her thoughts. “Cafeteria food on a Friday night, Max? We can do better than this.”

“Oh. I’d love to, Rachel, but I...” Max trails off, gesturing to Warren in line. She watches as he finishes paying at the register, casting a quizzical look to Rachel and fumbling with two loaded trays as he approaches. Max resists the urge to hop out of her seat to go help him before he spills everything.

“Oh,” Rachel says, smile turning sly as she gives Max an appraising glance. “Hot date?”

Max blanches and shakes her head and Rachel laughs. Max expects to feel embarrassed or teased, but Rachel’s laughter is too gentle to bruise, mercifully tapering off as Warren makes it to the table.

“Hi Wendell,” Rachel greets him brightly, twisting to rest her hip against the edge of the table. “God, that looks _so_ good, I can’t blame you for going for a double serving.”

Warren sets the trays down, caught off guard. He glances around like he’s making sure Rachel isn’t talking to someone else. He smiles nervously and fidgets before sitting down across from Max and she thinks for a moment he might not bother correcting Rachel at all. “Hi Rachel. It’s Warren, actually, and this plate’s for Max.”

He emphasizes his point by sliding the tray over to her.

“Oh my gosh, I’m sorry,” Rachel’s apology sounds sincere to Max, despite the giggle that follows it. She smiles and shrugs, looking equal parts embarrassed and amused, and it’s enough to draw a real smile out of Warren. “Warren. My bad.”

“It’s fine,” he says. Warren pauses, glancing from Max to Rachel and back to their trays, obviously trying to find a polite way to ask why Rachel was interrupting their meal. “Um--”

“Listen, Warren,” Rachel begins sweetly, that tone that Max has noticed tends to creep into her voice when she’s trying to get her way. Max bites her lip to stop from smiling. One glance at Warren’s intent face is all it takes for Max to know it’s going to work just as well on him as it does on everyone else. “I kind of need a huge favor.”

“Uh, sure. What’s up, Rachel?”

“So, I goofed,” she laughs at herself again, running a hand through her hair and leaning into the table. “I meant to ask Max earlier, but I totally forgot. I need her help with something tonight, I’m going to have to steal her from you.”

She drops her palm over Max’s shoulder as she’s speaking and squeezes. Dismayed, Warren looks to Max for confirmation. All she can do is shrug weakly and try not to wince at the blush she can feel heating her face.

“But, I--”

“I _know,_ I can’t believe it either,” Rachel interrupts, distress dripping off every word. “We had first period together so it’s not like I didn’t get a chance, you know? I totally blanked. And now,” Rachel cuts herself off, looking between Max and Warren again, and shaking her head with a sigh. “God, what am I doing? You already bought her dinner, I can’t interrupt. I’m sorry, guys.”

“Uh,” Warren begins, looking helplessly at Max.

She shrugs.

“I’m making an awful first impression, aren’t I?” Rachel smiles ruefully. “I got your name wrong and I ruined dinner.”

“It’s not that big of a deal,” Warren says, taking an anxious sip of his soda. He casts his gaze around the cafeteria nervously, as if the key to resolving this awkward situation might be somewhere in the room with them. “And, I mean, I wouldn’t say _ruined—”_

“It’s _embarrassing_ ,” Rachel cuts him off with a laugh, running a hand through her hair. The motion causes her shirt to ride up, exposing a sliver of skin, a flash of metal at her bellybutton.

“Y’know what? It’s fine,” Warren says after a long moment, voice slightly strained. He drums his fingers against the tabletop and fixes Max with a look that’s almost pleading. “I can make it up to you later?”

“Oh, Warren--” Rachel starts.

“No, really,” Warren cuts her off with an encouraging grin before returning his attention to Max. “You don’t mind, right?”

Max shakes her head.

“Oh my god, Warren, you’re a lifesaver. Here, at least let me take care of dinner,” Rachel reaches into her pocket and withdraws her wallet, pulling out a twenty dollar bill and sliding it across the table, ‘til her fingertips bump against Warren’s. He flounders, trying to press the money back into her grip but Rachel’s already retreating, sliding behind Max completely now. She tugs gently at the back of Max’s shirt until Max stands up from the table.

“Rachel, you really don’t have to--”

“Please, I insist. You were really cool about this, at least let me treat,” Rachel says. She’s still so close, Max can feel when her attention shifts, zeroing in on Alyssa Anderson, lingering near the doorway of the dining hall, eyeing the line to the counter. “Oh, hey, Alyssa! Over here!”

Rachel guide Max a few steps away from the table but releases her when Alyssa’s within hugging distance, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, “Hey, babe! Oh my god, I love your nails, you did these today, didn’t you?”

“Hey, Rachel,” Alyssa smiles, letting Rachel lift up her hand to inspect the color. “Yeah, just now. Like thirty minutes ago.”

“I love this shade, it looks so good with your hair. You totally have to do mine, next time,” Rachel gushes. She turns to Max, pulling Alyssa closer to the table by her arm and raising her hand up for Max to see. “So cool, right, Max?”

“Right,” Max agrees, self consciously curling her fingers into her palm. She can’t remember the last time she did anything to her nails. She certainly never wore anything as bold as the purple Alyssa was sporting.

“Warren?” Rachel prompts, tugging Alyssa up to the edge of the table.

“Really cool,” he agrees, a beat late.

A slow smirk unfurls across Rachel’s face. “So, Warren, I can’t help but notice you have _two_ dinners…”

Things fall together with alarming ease after that, Max finds herself being lead away from the table, the gentle pressure of Rachel’s palm against the small of her back quickening Max’s heartbeat along with her step.

“Did you plan that?” Max asks lowly, once she’s certain they’re out of earshot.

Rachel laughs, but doesn’t answer until they leave the cafeteria. “Not all of it. I’m good, Max, but I’m not that good.” She fishes a set of car keys out of her pocket, Max sees the headlights of a Lexus flash across the parking lot. “I hope you were taking notes,” Rachel grins at her, voice sly as her smile as they cross the tarmac.

Max isn’t sure why that makes her blush, but it does. “Notes on what?” she mumbles, angling her head subtly away.

The last of the day’s light is a vague impression to the west, sky gone to purple overhead. She resists the urge to fish her camera out of her bag. It’s a pretty sight, but not spectacular and with Rachel’s eyes on her in the waning light it feels almost like a trap.

But that’s dumb, right?

Rachel’s seen her photos. And Rachel thinks they’re _good._ Rachel’s been sweet and encouraging and more genuinely interested in her work than most people, actually. It’s flattering and it should be reassuring and yet all Max can think about now is fucking up. Maybe she’s been a fraud the whole time, her success a fluke. If she fails now, it’ll be worse than if Rachel never had shown an interest in her at all.

“Ground Control to Major Max.” Rachel’s leaning into the hood of the car, fingers curled over the top of the open passenger side door, waiting for Max to get in. The look on her face is more curious than impatient. “Can you hear me, Major Max?”

“Sorry,” Max blurts out, clearing her throat and ducking into the car. It’s _nice_ , Max observes. She thinks about stepping back outside, making sure the soles of her shoes are clean enough to not stain the pale creme of the floor mat, but Rachel shuts the door before she gets a chance.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” Rachel assures her, settling into the driver’s seat. She turns the key in the ignition and the dashboard blinks to life, music pouring from the speakers, something rhythmic and bassy that vibrates in Max’s chest. “What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing.”

Rachel hums doubtfully, but lets the matter drop.

“Can we turn the music down a bit?” Max asks after a moment, feeling annoying but unable to hold back. It’s _really_ loud.

“Oh, sure,” Rachel agrees easily, thumbing a button built into the steering wheel until the volume drops to something more comfortable. “Not your style? I’ve got CDs on the visor up there.”

“It’s fine, just loud,” Max assures her. “A little surprising. I thought you were more punk rock than hip hop.”

“Don’t get me wrong, punk was my first love,” Rachel says. “But it can’t be my only love. Too much of one thing, even a great thing, gets boring _quick_ , Max. 

“Besides, even Chloe listens to more than punk sometimes,” Rachel continues, then glances around dramatically, lowering her voice when she continues, “You didn’t hear it from me, but if you snoop through her CD collection you’ll find a burned disc that _says_ Circle Jerks but is really just ABBA after track two.”

“Our moms used to let us watch Mamma Mia with them,” Max laughs, remembering summer nights, sitting cross-legged on the carpet in front of the television, Max’s mom and Joyce behind them on the couch, sipping wine. She can almost taste the sweetness of the floats her mother had made them, can almost hear the sound of their combined laughter filling the room, can almost feel Chloe’s pinky looped over hers on the floor. It’s a good memory, from the last uncomplicated season they’d shared, before William died, before she’d had to move away.

“You moved when she was thirteen, right?” Rachel asks.

“Fourteen,” Max corrects her, sliding the edge of her thumbnail along the seatbelt. “I was thirteen, she was fourteen.”

“I’ve seen pictures,” Rachel says. “Joyce has a few in the front hall. And Chloe’s got a couple of the two of you in her room. But it’s hard to imagine her then, you know? Like, what she must have been like as a kid.”

This is the part where Max is supposed to drop her voice conspiratorially and launch into some story from their childhood, something she and Rachel can bond over, something they can use to tease Chloe.The invitation couldn’t be more clear but Max finds herself oddly reluctant. It’s immature, she knows, to be jealous of Rachel, especially after all the effort Chloe’s put into make sure she feels included. But the feeling’s like a splinter, stuck just under her skin, and she can’t quite seem to dig it all the way out.

Max bites her lip, feeling silly and possessive, and shrugs as casually as she can. “She was different, for sure. But not too much.”

Rachel nods and taps her fingers against the steering wheel and Max thinks she sees an uncharacteristic expression of dismay flicker across Rachel’s face.

The silence hangs for just a moment too long before Rachel picks the conversation back up so smoothly Max almost feels like she could have imagined the tension that had bloomed between them. Rachel asks about her day, and then about her classes, and then about the rock-hard french toast sticks they’d served in the caf for lunch. It’s easy conversation and Rachel seems genuinely interested in all of Max’s boring answers but Max finds herself distracted, still tangled up in the conversation they’d just escaped. 

It’s just that she’s still not used to sharing Chloe at all. She had eight years of Chloe all to herself. _Eight_ compared to Rachel’s three. But it doesn’t feel like enough sitting here in Rachel’s car, staring at the point where the octopus tattoo on Rachel’s thigh disappears beneath her shorts, mentally trying to picture what the rest of it looks like instead of obsessing over the fact that Chloe’s definitely seen it all, has probably traced its whole length with her fingers instead of just her eyes. Because if those are the kinds of things that Chloe and Rachel get to keep for themselves, then is it really so bad that Max wants to keep the pillow forts and clumsy first kisses for herself?

The conversation rolls on and most of Max’s lingering guilt is gone by the time they arrive at the Snack Shack, and the nagging insecurity that had choked her in the car evaporates when Chloe vaults over the counter and hauls Max into a hug that lifts her up off the floor.

X.x.x.

Friday evening’s not a slow shift at the Snack Shack, and Max feels kind of awkward standing off to the side of the counter, trying to hold up her end of the conversation while Chloe checks out a series of increasingly disgruntled looking customers.

Neither Chloe nor Rachel seem particularly worried, though, not even when Chloe’s co-worker shows up to relieve her at the same time as a particularly frustrated man storms out of the store muttering about customer service. The new arrival shoots Chloe an expectant look, to which she replies with a shrug.

“Thank _god_ you’re here, I honestly started to feel my brain cannibalizing itself out of boredom,” Chloe tells him, stripping her uniform shirt off right there behind the counter, leaving herself in just a tank top. “She’s all yours, Dylan.”

Dylan scowls as he brushes past her to take his place behind the counter. He keeps on glowering as Rachel hooks a finger through the belt loop of Max’s jeans and pulls her to the back of the store to pick out something to drink, Chloe trailing after them lazily. Rachel approaches the register with a six pack of wine coolers, batting her eyelashes prettily as she sets them on the counter next to Max’s cola and Chloe’s Rockstar energy drink.

“I can’t sell this to you,” he says flatly, eyes anchored to some point just over Rachel’s shoulder.

Rachel hums thoughtfully and Max is sure she’s going to push the matter but then she shrugs and lifts the six-pack with a twirl, shoving it into Chloe’s arms and shooing her off down the aisle. “Worth a shot.”

They head to the parking lot, so that Chloe can stash her work shirt in her truck and debate briefly on where to grab dinner, although it doesn’t take long before they unanimously settle on the Taco Hut across the street. 

Max tries to argue when Rachel whips out her debit card to pay after they’ve placed their orders, but Chloe cuts her off with a whisper, leaning in so close that Max can feel her breath when she speaks. Max catches the words “Rachel” and “sugar mama” but her blood’s rushing too fast and too loud through her ears to make out anything else. Red-faced, she lets herself be lead to a booth in the back.

Chloe takes the seat across from her, pressing her back up into the wall and stretching her legs out across the rest of the booth. Rachel scoots in beside Max, bumping their shoulders together two, three, four times until Max catches on that it’s on purpose and bumps her back.

The food is generic in a comforting sort of way, not particularly better than what she could have gotten at the caf tonight in anyway but the company. Chloe eyeballs the chalupa Max ordered pathetically until Max finally offers to let her try it. She tips over her drink but somehow manages not to spill when she leans over the table to take a bite right from Max’s hands. Rachel rolls her eyes at the exchange and launches into a story about an overly aggressive goat she ran into at a petting zoo once until Max is laughing so hard she can hardly finish her meal.

“Oh, sweet,” Rachel says, staring down at her phone in between lazy sips of her drink. “Max, what time do you have to be back on campus tonight?”

“Uh.” This is only half of a question, Max knows. She wishes she knew where it was going so she could choose her answer more carefully, but elects to go with honesty anyway. “Anytime, really. I don’t have plans in the morning.”

“Perfect,” Rachel grins, leaning back into her seat and looking between Max and Chloe. “We’re gonna go to the beach.”

Max can see Chloe perking up in her peripheral vision, and if Chloe’s excited, there’s no telling what she’s in for, so she asks. “Won’t it be kind of...cold?”

Rachel looks at her the same way that Joyce had looked at her and Chloe when they were kids, when they’d just said something particularly naive. Only Max doesn’t remember her cheeks turning quite so hot under Joyce’s fond gaze.

“It’s why man invented the bonfire, Max,” Rachel says. “Beach parties.” The chuckle that bubbles out of her is easy and nonthreatening.

It’s the same kind of laughter Warren got earlier, Max thinks, and immediately pushes the thought to the back of her mind. Rachel’s given her no reason to distrust her, and besides, she’s trying to get Max to tag along, not stay behind.

“Burn some shit,” Chloe interjects, nodding sagely, immediately betrayed by a grin spreading slow on her face. “Smoke some shit.”

“I’m not really dressed for a party.” Max can hear in her own voice how thin an excuse it is, but alcohol and drugs have never been her scene. As for whatever else it is they get up to at parties, she’s not sure it ever could be.

Rachel leans forward over the table and takes one of Max’s hands in both of her own, eyes so wide and bright it feels like they take up most of her face, and tells her in a conspiratorial tone that they can dance even sober.

If Max said no now, it’d be like saying no to a really well-groomed puppy. “Okay,” she says, and tries a smile. “But I’ll warn you, I only really know the Macarena.”

Chloe snorts. “Don’t sell yourself short, Max. I know I’ve seen you do the chicken dance.”

Max kicks her under the table, and when she turns back, Rachel’s leaned back in her seat again, triumphantly finishing off her last bite of food. “You can square dance for all I care. Let’s go get changed.”

X.x.x

Honestly, the idea of going to a party with Rachel and Chloe is still kind of daunting, but wimping out and disappointing them both would be even worse, so Max agrees, finally, to go with them. They end up driving to Chloe’s house to get ready. Max wonders if Chloe and Rachel suspect she’d try to beg off again if they took her all the way back to Blackwell.

David and Joyce are home when they arrive, eating dinner off of TV trays in the living room. Chloe shouts out a greeting and races up the stairs, leaving behind Rachel and Max who linger in the doorway to receive the hugs Joyce offers them. David stays put, eyes locked on the TV screen in front of him, for which Max is grateful, not offended. He has a way of making her feel like an intruder, no matter where she is.

“Took you long enough,” Chloe gripes when they finally make it to her room. There’s a towel slung around her neck, a bundle of clothes tucked under her arm. “I’m gonna shower real quick. I smell, uh, like I just spent eight hours selling vape juice and week-old hot dogs to a bunch of single dads.”

She leaves, shutting the door behind her with unexpected carefulness.

“Oh, wow, she’s on her best behavior for you,” Rachel notes. “Normally she slams that thing hard enough to shake the whole damn house, if she knows David’s home to get pissed off about it.”

Max shrugs. “She probably just doesn’t feel like getting hassled right after work.”

“You should pick the music, since I did earlier,” Rachel says, sliding over some of the junk that clutters the top of Chloe’s dresser and laying out the makeup she’d brought up from her car. “Chloe keeps her CDs right-- Oh.”

Max looks up from her place, crouched beside the low bookcase next to the stereo, to find Rachel staring at her. “Yeah, she showed me a couple weeks ago.”

Rachel’s pursed lips quickly melt into a smile. She nods. “Rock ‘n roll.”

“Is that a suggestion? I thought you were letting me pick,” Max jokes, angling her neck to see if it lands. Rachel’s smile tells her it does.

“Of course,” Rachel laughs lightly. “Music says a lot about us, don’t you think?”

Chloe’s music collection is mostly what Max had expected; lots of punk, some garage rock, a few ambiguously titled mixes. Then, something that surprises her: an unassuming burned CD, Pirate Radio Vol. 1, scrawled across its face in messy black marker.

Rachel perks up when the first notes begin to pour out of the stereo speakers. “What is this?”

“It’s, uh, Angus and Julia Stone.”

“Huh,” Rachel’s smile dimples her cheeks, but it’s offset by the divot in her brow. “I didn’t know Chloe listened to stuff like this.”

“Me neither,” Max says, angling her head away to hide the blush spreading across her cheeks.

Max perches on the edge of Chloe’s bed and watches Rachel do her makeup, trying to fight the flutter of butterflies in her belly. Rachel’s not as talkative while they wait for Chloe as she had been in the car, but that makes sense, she’s busy. And Max is feeling a little dreamy anyway, lost in her own thoughts.

“Fuck, that feels so much better,” Chloe groans as she barges back into the room, messy towel-dried hair clinging damply to her neck. She pauses in the center of the room, head canted slightly to the side, eyes locked with Max. “Oh. Hey.”

“Hey,” Max answers, feeling a little shy, a little excited, dizzy from the churning in her gut and the sudden intensity in Chloe’s gaze. “I didn’t realize you, um, kept these.”

“Why wouldn’t I keep your mixes?” Chloe’s voice is as soft as the unexpectedly tender look on her face.

“I dunno, I just sent them so long ago and I guess I thought maybe they weren’t, y’know, _your thing_ ,” Max admits, finally tearing her gaze away, focusing on the peeling edge of one of Chloe’s posters instead.

“Uh, in _what world_ would personalized mix CDs from my hipster best friend _not_ be my thing?” Chloe asks, launching the bundle of dirty clothes she’d brought back from the shower into a pile in the corner. She bounds across the room and throws herself onto the bed beside Max, hooking an arm around her neck and playfully ruffling her hair. Chloe’s skin is damp but warm, she smells soapy and clean and _good_ and Max fights every instinct she has to melt into the embrace, squirming futilely to escape Chloe’s grip.

“Watch it,” Max whines, batting pathetically at the hands in her hair.

“Dweeb,” Chloe smirks, finally letting her go. She slides off the bed, landing on her knees on the floor and pivoting to rifle through the disorganized pile of loose shoes against the wall. “Aw shit. Rach, have you seen my green Chucks?”

“Yes,” Rachel says. Max glances up and catches Rachel’s eyes in the mirror for a moment before her gaze shifts away. “But they’re ugly as hell and you’re not allowed to wear them to this thing, so I’m not telling you where.”

Max drops back against the bed, rolling over ‘til she’s face down, hoping the cool sheets will sap some of the heat from her face. She’s grateful when Rachel and Chloe keep bickering in the background, too distracted to comment on her private meltdown.

It doesn’t last long.

“Hey, sleepyhead, none of that,” Chloe says. Max feels a pillow collide with her back a moment later. “Up, up, up -- we’ve got to find you something to wear.”

“I kinda doubt you’ll just have something that fits me here,” Max grumbles, forcing herself upright again.

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Rachel says. “Chloe picks up clothes from all over.”

Chloe wrenches open her closet doors with way too much force, wooden frame clacking and rattling. She ducks her head sheepishly and catches Max’s eye. “Damn thing sticks,” she explains, voice tighter than usual. 

The closet is full to bursting with band tees and thrifted blazers, the floor barely visible through a blanket of shoes and fallen trinkets. Max considers her options in silence, a little overwhelmed by the sheer volume, all of it more stylish than anything in her own drawers. It’s when she notices Chloe rocking anxiously back on her heels next to her that she selects a red plaid shirt and shrugs it on, leaving it to hang open over the scoop-neck tee she’s already wearing.

It’s a little too big, and at first Max isn’t sure if the look works, but when she turns to Chloe she gets a big grin in response.

“Damn, Max, that looks better on you than it ever did on me,” Chloe says.

“That’s because it belongs to me.”

Max looks over and Rachel is appraising her--and the shirt--from across the room. She feels her face burning, remembering that first day in the girls’ bathroom, how when Rachel’s really paying attention her eyes light up like a cat stalking its prey. And she’s mousy Max Caulfield, fighting every instinct that tells her to scurry into a hole somewhere.

Rachel bares her teeth--no, smiles. A slow-blooming grin, warm and inviting, maybe a little lascivious when she delivers her verdict: “But I don’t think I mind you wearing my clothes, Max.”

The image of red plaid and nothing else comes unbidden to Max’s mind, and it takes Chloe giving her a high five to jolt her back into the moment. “Guess I’m ready to, uh, party then.”

There’s laughter from both of them, but it isn’t mean. It actually reminds Max of Kristen and Fernando, roasting each other and laughing long into Friday nights, and the feeling is familiar rather than isolating.

“Not quite.” Rachels the picture of deep thought with her teeth dug into her lip. “Needs something else. I know!”

Suddenly she’s drawing close, taking Max’s hand in hers, and before Max knows what’s happening Rachel is moving a black studded bracelet from her own wrist to Max’s.

“While we’re at it,” Rachel says conspiratorially, “with the wearing my clothes, you can borrow this for the night.” She winks and pulls away. “Just until we get you accessorizing for yourself.”

“Hey, I accessorize.” The protest rings hollow, but Max has to say _something_.

Chloe snorts. “Not like Rachel does,” she says, and then just like that, she’s back to her quest for shoes.

Max flops back on the bed and lifts her head only occasionally to advise on possible choices. No green Chucks, which Chloe continues to grumble about.

“Guys, guys,” Rachel calls until they look over. She’s holding a pair of cut-off jean shorts against her hips, over the shorts she’s already wearing. “Flirty or slutty?”

Chloe hums, cocking her head and leaning back on her arms against the bed. “Slutty. Like _way_. Verging on pornographic.”

Rachel chews her lip, thoughtfully. “Max?”

“Uh,” Max clears her throat, “yeah, I guess. A little.”

“Perfect,” Rachel grins, flicking open the button of the shorts she’s wearing, then sliding down the zipper in an almost continuous motion. She shimmies them down her legs, until she’s standing before them in her underwear.

So that’s what the rest of that tattoo looks like.

Max coughs, heart thumping, and tears her eyes away, darting her gaze around the room for something else to look at.

Super casual.

Chloe just chuckles, laugh a little breathier than normal. “Fucking exhibitionist.”

Max watches from the corner of her eye as Rachel slides the jean shorts up her legs, doing a little twirl once she fastens them closed. “Yeah?”

“Nice legs, Daisy Dukes.” The sarcasm in Chloe’s voice is at odds with the grin on her face.

Rachel just curtsies in response before stepping back to get a better look at herself in the mirror above the dresser. “God, this really is such a look. Okay. Max!”

Max jumps, startled. “What?”

“Will you let me do your makeup?”

“Um,” Max hesitates. She feels Chloe shift subtly on the bed next to her, turning to look at her instead of Rachel.

“Please?” Rachel asks sweetly. “Nothing crazy, I promise.”

“Okay,” Max agrees, hoping she sounds less nervous than she feels. “Where do you want me?”

Rachel crosses the room, seizing Max gently by the wrist and leading her back to the desk in the corner.

“Right here.” Rachel’s voice is almost as soft as the pressure of her hands against Max’s hips, guiding her until she’s sitting on the edge of the desk. “Just like this.”

It’s nerve-wracking at first with Rachel’s face so close to hers, her fingertips brushing Max’s brow, her cheeks, her chin. Rachel’s gaze locked on Max’s face, unwavering. Rachel talks the whole time. It’s amazing, really, how she can just _talk_ and talk and never run out of things to say. She explains what she’s doing and why, giving Max makeup tips that she knows she’ll never remember, let alone actually use.

Max isn’t sure where to look. Her eyes drift from Rachel’s face, to her shoulder, to the bed behind her where Chloe’s still laying back on her elbows, watching them. She doesn’t grin goofily when Max catches her eyes, doesn’t waggle her brows ridiculously. She just keeps staring, just keeps smoking her cigarette. It makes Max nervous, kind of, though not in a bad way.

When Rachel declares her work finished and drags Max off the desk to go examine herself in the mirror she feels a little foggy, a little out of breath. She wonders if it’s anything like Chloe or Rachel feel when they get high.

“Wow,” Max murmurs, taking in her reflection. The makeup’s surprisingly her style, not excessive or too bold like she’d feared. She looks nice.

Rachel, in the mirror over her shoulder, looks nicer. A slow, warm smile spreads across her face, crinkling the corners of her eyes. She steps forward, cups Max’s shoulders with her hands and leans in. “You look _gorgeous._ We’re going to have such a good time.”

For the first time tonight, despite the butterflies still fluttering in her stomach, Max really believes her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! please leave a review or kudos (or both. please, god, both). the next installment will be up next week.
> 
> check us out on tumblr at [explosionshark](http://explosionshark.tumblr.com/) and [holdsteady](http://holdsteady.tumblr.com/)


	2. After Hours (pt. 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “C’mon,” Chloe smiles, hopeful and sweet. “You’re having a good time, right?”
> 
> Max sees Rachel’s head tilt out of the corner of her eye, knows they’re both looking at her.
> 
> “Yeah,” Max says.
> 
> A great time, actually.
> 
> “Then stay,” Rachel says, bumping Max gently with her shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heeeeyyy here we are again! thanks for all the support last week, it's made us really excited to work on this thing again. next chapter should be up soon, in the next week or two
> 
> chapter title from "after hours" by we are scientists. fic title from "how to live here" by good luck

They end up at a part of the beach Max doesn’t know very well. She thinks she might have been camping here once, but it’s hard to tell in the dark. Chloe backs the truck up right to the edge of the sand before she kills the engine. Max slides out of the cab on Rachel’s side, senses immediately flooded with the familiar, smoky scent of burning wood.

Max casts her gaze out toward the beach, toward the crowd of partygoers milling around the great flickering beacon of the bonfire, and feels her mouth go dry. A ripple of laughter explodes from the crowd, carried over by a cold gust of wind from the ocean, boisterous and loud. There are more people here than she expected.

Rachel loops her arm around Max’s elbow and tugs her forward.

“You shouldn’t have backed up to the bonfire like that,” Rachel tells Chloe. “Someone’s definitely going to try to fuck in your truck.”

Chloe looks appraisingly from the fire to her truck and back. “Nuh-uh. Maybe if I’d pulled in normal, but this way there’s a direct line of sight from the beach. We’re good.”

“You’re assuming there’s no one here who would get off on that sort of thing,” Rachel says.

“Nobody at this party’s hot enough for you to pick up,” Chloe fishes a cigarette out of the pack in her back pocket, lighting it as she walks. “And for the sake of our friendship I have to assume that you respect me and my truck too much to have public sex in it. But if I’m wrong, please don’t tell me.”

Rachel barks out a laugh and veers to the right so she can hip-check Chloe in retaliation, yanking Max along with her, jostling their bodies. Chloe stumbles, the cigarette falls out of her mouth, and she doesn’t miss a beat, reaching down to pick it up. She barely pauses to thumb sand off the filter before she pops it back in her mouth. Max and Rachel both groan and veer back away from her.

“What?” Chloe grins, obnoxious.

It’s silly and stupid and more than a little gross, but the entire exchange loosens the knot in Max’s stomach enough to keep her moving. One foot in front of the other.

The other partygoers greet Chloe and Rachel warmly and are friendly enough when they’re introduced to Max. It’s not as awkward as Max expected it to be, even if she thinks it’s painfully obvious that this isn’t her usual crowd. It’s all skaters and burnouts and girls with dye in their hair and metal in their faces. Max only recognizes a few faces from Blackwell, so she knows the rest of the people here must be locals. A few of them look familiar, and she can even place some of them by name as kids she went to school with before she moved, but if they recognize her back they don’t come over to say hi.

“We should dance,” Rachel says and Max feels her heart leap into her throat.

Max opens her mouth, hoping that the perfect excuse will come rolling out without her having to think about it, but all she manages is a strangled “um,” before Chloe interrupts.

“No way, I just got off work and I’m tired,” Chloe says. “Max and I are gonna get some drinks and chill.”

Rachel’s brow divots and for a moment Max is sure she’s going to argue. It’s an agonizing prospect. The only thing more intimidating than the thought of dancing in front of a bunch of strangers is trying to say no to Rachel Amber. But then Rachel just sighs dramatically, rolling her eyes and turning on her heel.

“Fine, be boring,” she tosses over her shoulder. “You know where to find me if you decide you want to have a good time.”

Max waits until she’s sure Rachel’s out of earshot before she slides closer to Chloe, leaning her head against Chloe’s shoulder. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Chloe says in a puff of cigarette smoke. She flicks the butt of the cigarette down into the sand and stamps on it with her heel. Max frowns. “You looked about two seconds away from a panic attack.”

Max’s stomach sinks. “I did?”

Rachel’s never going to want to do anything with her again.

“I mean, to me,” Chloe says. She slings an arm over Max’s shoulder and steers her toward the cooler full of drinks they passed earlier. “But I’ve known you since before you could tie your shoes, so, y’know, I can spot all your tells.”

“My tells?” Max prompts.

Chloe bends down and rifles through the ice box, digging past the cheap beer on top for a can of Coke. She pops the tab absently before handing it off to Max. “Yeah. Like, okay, when you’re really nervous about something, your face does this.”

Max stares for a moment, trying to decipher the expression Chloe’s displaying. “That’s just a normal face.”

“Ah,” Chloe grins and takes a long gulp of the beer she’s finally selected for herself. “To the untrained eye. But I’m an expert Maxologist. Don’t forget.”

“A mixologist?” a voice says. Max turns to see Justin jogging up to them, with Trevor not far behind. “Can I get a sex on the beach?”

“You can get a fucking can of Bud to the dome.” Chloe undercuts her own threat by pulling Justin into a quick hug. They slap each other’s backs as they pull apart. Chloe repeats the ritual when Trevor catches up to them.

“Hi Max,” Justin greets her, flicking his eyes up and down her body once, twice. Max’s stomach flips in response, but she’s not sure if it’s in a good or a bad way. She thinks he was cuter before, when they were younger; back before he grew in the patchy little mustache.

“Hi Justin,” Max says. “Hi Trevor.”

“Maximilian,” Trevor beams at her. “Did you guys just get here?”

“A little while ago,” Chloe says. “Rach dragged us out here.”

“We figured. We saw her dancing back there,” Justin jerks his head back toward the bulk of the crowd. “Decided to go looking for you. Wanna go sit down?”

The boys lead them to a spot just at the edge of the bonfire’s light. There are a few people there, chilling in lawn chairs, or on the sand itself. It’s darker here and the music’s not as loud and Max is grateful for the change in environment.

There’s a boy with a ukulele stretched out on a lounger in the sand. Chloe marches up to him and plants a foot on his shoulder, pushing until he falls off the chair and into the sand. The glare he sends Chloe’s way when he stands up utterly fails to faze her.

“Move,” she says, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. He does. “Here, Max.”

Max settles down on the lounger, shooting an apologetic look at the boy Chloe had kicked off of it. He shrugs, apparently over it. Max curls her legs in towards herself, making room for Chloe to perch at the end of the chair. The plastic is faded, sun-bleached and brittle. It reminds Max of the kind of lawn furniture her parents owned when she was a kid.

There’s another round of introductions, but at least this time Max feels like she stands a chance to remember these people’s names. The ones that are still in high school all go to Arcadia Bay High, except for Max, Trevor, and Justin. A couple of them even go to Bay City College. Everyone else just works, like Chloe.

The group is welcoming, but Max is content to keep quiet during most of the conversation. She’s less nervous like this, Chloe’s weight pressing down on her from the arm she’s rested on Max’s legs. Max listens to them talk about their jobs, their girlfriends, their boyfriends, that teacher they all hate.

Chloe’s quieter than Max expected, chiming in occasionally to talk some shit, but spending the rest of her time quietly sipping her beer. Her palm’s curled over Max’s knee, thumb tracing absent patterns into the fabric of her jeans, but it’s distracted. Max follows her gaze back to the people dancing in the brilliant light of the fire. Back to Rachel.

Max can’t blame her for being distracted, really.

There’s a magnetism about Rachel that’s only amplified when there are people around her. It’s like she draws in all the energy, all the movement, and attention and excitement around her, and uses it to make herself bigger, better, brighter.

Rachel dances with abandon, with the confidence of a girl that’s beautiful and knows it. She’s the sun, everyone dancing alongside her just planets in her orbit. Max can’t help staring, hopes she’s not obvious. Her fingers itch for her camera; she tightens them around her sweating can of soda instead until the metal dips beneath her fingertips.

Chloe’s phone vibrates in her pocket. She frowns, tearing her gaze away from Rachel and fishing it out of her jeans. The screen lights her face up in the dark when she checks the text. Max can’t see what it says, but she sees the look that Chloe shoots to Justin and Trevor, sees her shake her head in reply. The two boys get up from the sand, announce that they’ll be back later and wander off into the dark.

“What was that about?” Max asks lowly, leaning forward so Chloe can hear her.

“They’re gonna go smoke,” Chloe answers, equally quiet. She’s leaning into Max too, and Max can smell the beer on her breath, the cologne she applied before they left. “They were seeing if I wanted to go with.”

“Oh,” Max says. “You can, y’know. I don’t mind.”

She would mind, actually. This group is nice enough and much more Max’s speed, but still the idea of being left alone with them makes Max faintly queasy. Chloe’s always been the talkative one, the interesting one. What if they ask Max questions and she doesn’t have anything interesting to say? What if she makes Chloe and Rachel look bad?

But still. She doesn’t want to hold Chloe back.

“It’s okay,” Chloe says, long fingers flexing along Max’s knee. She grins at Max reassuringly before her gaze drifts back to Rachel in the firelight. Max watches the smile fade from her lips almost instantly, shifting into something more pensive. More tense.

“Chloe,” Max says without thinking. Chloe sits up a little, turning around to look at Max’s face. “Is everything okay?”

Chloe chews her lip, like she does when she’s thinking of what to say. “Yeah. Why?”

Suddenly all the details Max thinks she’s noticed tonight feel coincidental and stupid and she doesn’t know what to say. She’s relieved when she catches sight of Rachel over Chloe’s shoulder, walking toward them with one of the girls she’d been dancing with in tow.

“Max! I wanted to introduce you to my friend Rosa,” Rachel says.

Max rises from the chair, feeling Chloe’s gaze on her neck as she reaches out to shake Rosa’s hand. “Hi Rosa. It’s nice to meet you.”

“You too,” says Rosa, who’s kind of startlingly beautiful, even in the low light of this part of the beach. “Rachel was just telling me that you’re a photographer.”

“Honestly, one of the best at Blackwell,” Rachel boasts. Max goes warm all over. “Rosa’s a model.”

“Oh,” Max says and Rosa grins.

“Rachel says you could help me work on my portfolio.”

“Oh,” Max says again, feeling like a total geek. They’re just both so pretty and it’s kind of mind-boggling that this conversation is even happening right now. “Yeah. I mean, yes, of course. I mean, I mostly do like, candids and landscape stuff but sometimes I do sessions with models.”

It’s a true statement if the photos she’s taken of her friends as a part of a class project count.

“Hey,” Chloe interrupts with a palm on Max’s shoulder. “Sorry. I’ll be back in a minute, I’m gonna go catch up with those guys, okay? Hi, Rosa.”

“Hey Chlo,” Rosa’s voice drops an octave when she greets Chloe, eyes trailing Chloe’s body the way Justin’s had trailed Max earlier. “Long time, no see.”

Chloe shrugs and smiles a little awkwardly, sticking her hands in her pockets. She shuffles back a couple steps.

“What guys?” Rachel asks, catching Chloe by the sleeve as she passes.

“Justin and Trev,” Chloe answers. She tugs herself out of Rachel’s grip. “I’ll be right back.”

The three of them watch her go.

Rachel hums, brows knit tight on her forehead, as she watches Chloe lope off. Then she shrugs and turns to Max, an easy grin dominating her features. “Did you bring your camera?”

“No,” Max says, regretting it for the second time that night.

Rachel frowns and Max would give anything to go back in time so she could grab it from her dorm room while they were making their escape from Blackwell earlier.

“Alright, well, no big deal. Just use my phone.”

“Wait, like, now?” Max takes the phone Rachel offers her without thinking and feels like an idiot as soon as she speaks. Of course Rachel meant now.

“Yeah.” Rachel flips her hair and grabs Rosa by the wrist, leading her back closer to the fire, clearly expecting Max to follow. “I know digital’s not your fave, but your loss is my followers’ gain.”

Max spends a couple minutes fiddling around with the camera on Rachel’s phone. The bonfire’s light is gorgeous in real life, but it’s kind of a nightmare for an impromptu photo shoot. It feels kind of like a test. Max knows that’s a little paranoid, but it’s hard to feel like it could be anything else with the way Rachel’s watching her, eyes locked on Max’s face. She never even looks away when Max catches her staring, just keeps nursing the long-necked bottle of beer in her hand.

Despite the pressure, it doesn’t take long for Max to get familiar with her new instrument. Photography’s her _thing._ She’s good at it. She’s got a long way to go to be great, she knows, that’s why she’s here at Blackwell. But this is something she can do. She knows it is.

Rachel smiles, slow and warm when Max takes the first shot. She and Rosa crowd in on either side of Max to see how the photo comes out. Rachel laughs and shakes Max by the shoulders and presses an exuberant kiss to the top of her cheek. She demands a selfie with all three of them next and Max, dizzy from the rush of approval, doesn’t hesitate to comply.

The shoot carries on, ebbing and flowing like the party itself. Rachel’s at her most magnetic again, dragging random others in for photos here or there, but deftly keeping herself the center of Max’s focus. She and Rosa are both great subjects, but there’s something about Rachel’s charisma that drives Max to try to make these pictures _more_ than just some goofy shots of some random party.

She wants Rachel to see that she’s good. She wants Rachel to be impressed with her.

And she is, apparently.

Rachel’s praise is effusive and constant, but it doesn’t feel like flattery. Well, it does a little bit, but it doesn’t feel useless, it doesn’t feel insincere.

And besides, it’s nice to be flattered, a little.

“Oh my god,” Rachel breathes, pressing forward into Max’s back to look over her shoulder. Her cheek is warm, a little sweaty where it brushes the side of Max’s head. Max tries to keep her hands still and her breathing even despite Rachel’s closeness. “Max, tell me you’re using some of these in class.”

“Do you really think they’re good enough for that?” Max asks.

“ _Yes_ ,” Rachel insists. She reaches around Max’s body to tap the screen, flicking between different photos in the gallery. “Like, _look!_ Look at this one, with the—the lines and shit! All this cool shit you did with long exposure.”

“Thanks,” Max feels her body heating up. There’s hair in front of her face. She wants to reach up and tuck it behind her ear, but she’s afraid of jostling Rachel’s arms on either side of her.

“Here,” Rachel says, gently extracting the phone from Max’s grip. “Let me…”

Rachel falls back a few steps and brings the phone up to eye level. Max casts a quick glance to either side, before realizing Rachel’s just taking a picture of her. The realization makes her a little nervous, but mostly she feels her heart swell up with pride.

“Say cheese,” Rachel says and Max doesn’t need to because her smile is wide and immediate anyway.

“Is that going online too?” Max asks, sliding up to Rachel’s side to see. It’s a good photo. The fire makes the lighting dramatic, but the expression on Max’s face is genuine glee. It’s almost weird to look at. Most of Max’s selfies feel more like diary entries, not the sort of thing her mom would rush to hang on the wall in the living room.

“It can, if you want,” Rachel says. “I took it for me, though.”

“Oh,” Max watches as Rachel navigates to her contact list and adds the photo to Max’s entry. Then she adds a camera and a heart emoji next to her name. Max only realizes she’s grinning dopily when Rachel bumps their shoulders together

Rachel slips the phone back into her pocket and hooks a finger through Max’s belt loop. “C’mon, we need more drinks.”

The cooler is looking way worse than it did earlier, much emptier now. There’s some sand on the ice. Rachel plunges her hand right in and feels around until she finds another beer for herself and a can of Sprite for Max. Her fingers are ice-cold when she passes Max the soda and Max can’t help the way her eyes drift down Rachel’s exposed midriff, to the long expanse of her bare legs. Today was unusually warm for October, but the sun went down hours ago and it’s getting chilly here on the beach. She’s got to be cold.

If she is, though, she doesn’t show it.

“I’m glad you came, Max. I was kind of afraid you wouldn’t.” Rachel sounds so sincere that Max feels retroactively bad for her half-hearted excuses earlier.

“Me too,” Max says. “I mean, I’m glad too.”

“How about that dance now?” Rachel asks, but it’s doesn’t feel like a command, the way it did before.

It’s not as scary, either, even if ultimately Max finds herself shaking her head no anyway. “Maybe next time. I wanna go see what’s up with Chloe, she disappeared a while ago.”

“Okay,” Rachel says. “Do you want me to go with you?”

“No, it’s okay,” Max says. She tips her can toward Rachel, feeling her goofy smile return a little. “Thanks for the drink.”

Rachel smiles and taps Max’s can with her own and slips back toward the group.

Max finds Trevor and Justin before she finds Chloe. They’re not far from where they’d been all hanging out earlier, before they’d left to smoke. “Have you guys seen Chloe anywhere?” she asks.

Trevor seems pretty spaced out, lying on his back in the sand, with his head in some pretty girl’s lap. It’s Justin who answers. “Yeah, I think she went back to her truck.”

Max nods, already turning to go when Justin calls out again, stopping her.

“Hey, Max, do you wanna play Truth or Dare? We’re trying to get a game going.”

“No thanks,” Max says. Then, at his disappointed look she adds, “Maybe some other time.”

He doesn’t try to stop her again as she drifts back toward the parking lot, feeling more buoyant and at ease with each step. The night breeze seems to be fiercer every hour, but Max isn’t bothered by it, still warmed from the inside by the smell of fire on the air, the echo of laughter in her ears.

Chloe’s stretched out on a blanket in the bed of her truck, wispy tendrils of gray smoke rising from her mouth. Max watches the cherry of her cigarette blaze and dim as Chloe smokes, and follows the light like a beacon.

“That smoke smells different,” Max notes, hopping onto the gate of the truck bed. There’s hint of pot smoke on the wind, but Max knows this isn’t that. This scent’s different; sweeter than the usual acrid smell of Chloe’s cigarettes, sharper and more pleasant than weed.

“It’s cloves,” Chloe says. She props herself up on her elbows to look at Max. “Rachel left ‘em in the glovebox a while ago. My pack ran out.”

It’s kind of a nice smell, Max thinks, but she doesn’t want to say so. She would rather Chloe quit altogether, but she’s afraid of saying that too. Chloe never seems to appreciate the sentiment from Joyce.

“It’s pretty out here,” Max says, idly toying with a loose thread of the blanket. She thinks she recognizes it; an old, dark blue thing that seemed to manifest whenever they needed to build a blanket fort. It’s rougher now than she remembers, fabric pebbling and worn. She bets it’s still as oppressively hot as it’s always been, though.

Chloe nods. “Do you remember that weekend your folks brought us out here? We stayed two nights. You and I tried to dig our way to China.”

“Kind of,” Max says, wishing it was easier to remember. “I thought this place seemed familiar when we got here, but I wasn’t sure. How old were we?”

“You were like seven,” Chloe says. “It was right when summer break started. We were both really excited because you were gonna change schools next year, so you could go to Douglas with me.”

“How far did we get?” Max asks.

“What?”

“To China,” she clarifies. “How far?”

Chloe’s smile is slow and sweet and it makes something clench tight in Max’s chest. “Nearly there.”

Carefully, Max eases herself down beside Chloe on the blanket. She smells like weed, underneath the clove-scented smoke swirling around them now. She looks calmer than she had earlier, brow smooth and uncreased, jaw relaxed.

“Have fun with Justin and Trevor?” Max asks, worried as soon as she speaks that it sounds more pointed than she meant it.

Chloe doesn’t seem to take it poorly, though. “Yeah. You know how it is with those guys. Couple of clowns, but they’re good dudes.”

Max nods. With her eyes adjusted to the dark, she can make out a hole in the shoulder of Chloe’s sleeve. She touches it with the tips of her fingers, unthinking.

“And, y’know, I needed to chill out,” Chloe continues, speaking through another puff of smoke. She rolls her head lazily to the side, locking eyes with Max for a moment before letting her gaze drift down to where Max is toying with her shirt. “I dropped some ash on myself. Smoking on my back like a dumbass.”

Max frowns, covers the spot gently with her palm. “Did it hurt?”

Chloe takes so long to answer that Max thinks she might not have heard. “Not enough to make me stop.”

Max watches Chloe take another long drag of the cigarette. The ash grows as she inhales, dangling precariously off the tip and Max wants to reach out, to pluck it from her grip and throw it off the side of the truck. But she stays still, afraid of what would happen if she tried and Chloe didn’t let her.

The column of ash falls off onto the blanket. Chloe looks down and frowns, smudging out the weak orange embers with her thumb. She stubs the cigarette out against the metal of the truck bed.

“Did something happen?” Max asks, before she can think better of it. At Chloe’s blank look, she clarifies. “With Rachel. Like, between the two of you.”

Chloe works her jaw wordlessly for a moment. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” Max says, which is a lie. Chloe can probably tell, so she tries again, fighting against the part of her that’s screaming she’s making a mistake, that she should just shut up, keep her nose out of their business. “Did you fight or something? Or, like, argue?”

Chloe breathes out hard through her nose and Max is sure she’s gone too far, she’s fucked this up completely. And then she answers, “Rachel and I don’t fight.”

It definitely doesn’t look that way to Max.

“You don’t?” she probes gently.

“Nah,” Chloe’s voice is quiet. She breaks eye contact with Max, rolling onto her back to stare up at the sky instead. “It’s not fighting. It’s… weirder than that.”

 _Worse?_ Max wants to ask, but it feels too pointed. More like a suggestion than an honest question.

Chloe drums her fingers along the metal of the truck bed. Max chews her tongue and forces herself to wait for Chloe to speak again, instead of saying something stupid she’ll regret.

“We’re just…assholes to each other, sometimes, without really meaning to be, I think. We’ll, uh, fuck things up, y’know? And then never talk about it,” Chloe says, finally.

“Did she, uh, fuck up?” Max asks, wrestling with her curiosity. Chloe couldn’t have been more vague if she’d _tried_ and Max is dying to know specifics, but it’s not her place to push. Especially when Chloe’s obviously not ready to talk about details. “Or did you?”

“Not on purpose.”

“Maybe you _should_ talk about it,” Max says, feeling a bit like a coward, thinking of all the things she can’t bring herself to talk about with Chloe. Not yet.

“Probably,” Chloe says. 

“But not soon.”

“What gave me away?”

“Your face,” Max says. She concentrates on keeping her expression neutral. “It went like this.”

Chloe’s laugh is so sharp and so sudden it’s almost startling. “Wow. Yeah, uh, guess I need to work on my poker face, huh?”

“Why bother?” Max teases. “I’ve known you since before I could tie my shoes.”

Chloe laughs again but it’s softer this time, mixed in with a sigh. “Ah. Shit.”

She sits up and hops down from the truck bed, holding out her hand to haul Max up after her. Her fingers are cold.

“Enough of this mopey shit,” Chloe declares. “It’s a party, right?”

“Right.”

“Then let’s go fucking party.”

X.x.x

It’s two a.m. and Rachel and Chloe are _drunk._

They’re drunk and they’re happy, leaning all over each other as they wobble steadfastly forward up the steep sloping road that will lead them back to Chloe’s house. Max follows, a few paces behind now. She’d been alongside them for the first part of the walk but after Chloe slipped on some gravel earlier and nearly brought Rachel and Max down with her, she’d chosen to fall back.

No reason for all three of them to eat shit. Besides, if Chloe and Rachel both go down for real, they’ll need someone to help them back up again.

“God,” Rachel whines, dragging her feet on the pavement. “You know what sounds so fucking good right now?”

 _A bed,_ Max thinks. She’s hardly ever awake this late and when she is, she’s usually in bed with her laptop and a playlist of YouTube videos ready to go.

“A bed,” Chloe says and Max grins automatically. 

“Yeah,” Max agrees, quickening her pace to fall into step beside them again.

“Ugh, _no_. You guys are boring,” Rachel complains. “ _Fries._ Like, a big huge plate of cheese fries sounds amazing right now. Oh! Or pancakes. Guys, we should go get night breakfast.”

“Nowhere’s open right now,” Chloe says.

“I know,” Rachel sighs. “God, this town sucks. You need to feed me when we get to your place.”

“Are you kidding? Mom and David would lose their shit.” Chloe grunts softly as Rachel careens into her, breaking her stride for a moment to steady them both. “Besides, I’m tired.”

“So, fucking…cook quieter, damn,” Rachel says. “And tired? At two on a Friday? You’re losing your edge, Price.”

“I worked all day,” Chloe huffs. “Max, tell her I worked.”

“She did, Rachel,” Max points out obediently. Chloe bumps her shoulder gently in gratitude.

“ _Ugh_.” Rachel turns, walking backward to face them as she talks. The slope of the hill is gentler now, they’ve finally hit the residential area of Arcadia Bay again, but Max still feels like this is probably a level of walking difficulty a shade too advanced for drunken Rachel. “You know what? It’s fine. You’re getting older, Chloe, it’s natural that you’re going to start losing stamina.”

“What?” Chloe squawks, outraged. Max can barely stop herself from laughing at the indignance on Chloe’s face when she glances up at her. “I’ve got _plenty_ of stamina.”

“It’s nothing to get defensive about,” Rachel says, voice sugary sweet. “This was totally my bad. It’s really not fair of me to just expect you to keep up, y’know.”

This time Max does laugh. She can’t help it.

“Um, fuck both of you,” Chloe says, way too loudly for the neighborhood they’re walking through _in the middle of the night._ She stops, abruptly and waits for a moment for Max and Rachel to follow suit. “Hey, Max?”

“Yeah?” Max barely has a chance to answer before she’s lifted up and off the ground. Before she realizes what’s going on, before she even has a chance to shout or struggle, Chloe’s lifted her off her feet and thrown her across her shoulders in a fireman’s carry. 

And then they’re _running_.

“Chloe!” Max shrieks, heedless of her own volume. Max grabs a fistful of Chloe’s shirt with her free hand, struggling against the instinct to thrash around in Chloe’s grip. Fighting Chloe now would definitely take their chances of tumbling to the ground from eighty percent to one hundred percent. “Please don’t drop me, please don’t drop me, please don’t drop me.”

“Relax,” Chloe pants, like that’s a thing that’s remotely possible to do when your drunk friend suddenly picks you up and starts running. “I’ve got you.”

And then, as if to demonstrate, she heaves her shoulders. Max shrieks again at the brief sensation of falling before she settles back across Chloe’s body.

“See?” Chloe says and Max could kill her right now.

“I swear, Chloe, if you drop me I’ll...” _tell your mom_ , is what she’d been about to say. But that’s kind of embarrassing. “I’ll…do _something._ ”

Okay, that was worse.

Chloe just huffs out another laugh, squeezing the back of Max’s thigh reassuringly. “Oh _no._ Not _something._ ”

“Something _bad_ ,” Max clarifies, though it doesn’t help, Chloe laughs again, louder, and Max drops her head in defeat. “Oh, shut up.”

The sound of approaching footfalls, has Max cautiously twisting to look behind them. Rachel’s laughing, cheeks pink, smile wide and beautiful as she catches up.

“Okay,” Rachel says. “Okay, put her down, we get it.”

Chloe slows her pace down to a walk again, but doesn’t set Max down, just adjusts her grip a little further. 

“Nah,” Chloe says, spinning with a flourish. Max yelps again, hopes that this isn’t the kind neighborhood where bored old people call the cops on every weird noise at night, and curls her body tighter around Chloe. “I think I’m good.”

“Uh, I’m not,” Max says and it’s kind of a lie, actually. If Chloe was going to drop her, she probably would have already and without that to worry about, it’s actually sort of nice up here. 

“Hey Rachel,” Chloe says. “Max here tells me that if I drop her she’ll _do_ something.”

“Hey.” Max feels her cheeks flush with warmth and angles her face away from Rachel. She wiggles experimentally but Chloe’s grip is sure. She’s trapped.

“Something _bad,”_ Chloe finishes.

Max groans, thumping Chloe’s hip lightly with the side of her fist. “Fuck you, Chloe.”

“Oh, _now_ I’m intrigued,” Rachel says sidling up to them. “Obviously, I don’t want Chloe to drop you. But I’d kill to see you do something bad.”

“Well, I can’t really do much of _anything_ from up here,” Max grumbles. Then, it occurs to her. “Except… Rachel, did Chloe ever tell you about the time that she cried when Claire Olson said that Joey had the weakest voice out of all the NSYNC.”

“What?” Rachel sounds _delighted._ “No, tell me everyth—”

“ _And_ here you go,” Chloe says, carefully depositing Max back onto her feet. “Uh. No hard feelings?”

Max makes a show of considering the hand Chloe’s extended to her in truce before she turns back to Rachel.

“Right, so. It was during first recess. Claire was showing off the t-shirt her sister brought her from their concert in Portland—”

“ _Exactly_ ,” Chloe interrupts. “Claire’s sister. Claire didn’t even _go_ to that concert, so her opinion means— _meant_ dick to me.”

Rachel throws her head back and cackles. She loops an arm around Max’s neck and pulls her close, so their sides are touching. “This is the best night of my life. Max, keep going.”

Max is happy to.

X.x.x

If there’s one thing Max is sure of after tonight, it’s that there’s no way to cook pancakes completely silently.

Although, credit where it’s due, Chloe really seems to be trying her best.

“ _Chlo-e,_ ” Rachel hisses, when the pan Chloe’s cooking on scrapes the stovetop. “Shhhh.”

Chloe nods frantically, biting her lip in concentration and carefully eases her spatula underneath the pancake to flip it. It lands with a quiet slap.

Rachel frowns and shakes her head gravely. Then she cants her neck backwards and unloads a glob of whipped cream directly into her mouth with a spray can. It’s like dropping a bucket full of nails onto a metal floor in the relative silence of the Price household.

Max winces, taking a guilty glance around the kitchen. She rises, quietly, from the dining room table and pads over to Rachel’s perch on the counter, gently attempting to take the whipped cream from her.

“Oh?” Rachel whispers. “You want some?”

Before Max can answer, Rachel’s already depressing the nozzle and there’s whipped cream _everywhere._

“Oops,” Rachel says. “Uh, I think I missed.”

Max looks down at the fluffy white mess dripping down her borrowed shirt and sighs. “Yep.”

“Sorry, Max.” Rachel _sounds_ like the means it, but when she reaches out with two fingers and scrapes a line of whipped cream off Max’s shirt front and into her mouth it feels distinctly more opportunistic than repentant. And then Rachel bursts out laughing.

“Okay,” Max says, feeling more than a little self-conscious at this point. “What is it?”

“It’s nothing, I just,” Rachel dissolves into another fit of giggles and struggles to regain enough composure to speak. “I guess I got a little sweet on you tonight, Max.”

Yeah, okay.

Max really can’t be mad.

Although the fact that Drunk Rachel is somehow just as charming as Sober Rachel feels like it should be reason enough.

Chloe turns to deposit a freshly cooked pancake atop a growing stack on the counter beside the kitchen and finally notices Max’s breakfast food makeover. “Oh, shit. Dude, you got fucked up.”

Rachel laughs again, though this time she leans way over and tries to smother the sound in Max’s shoulder. Max’s face burns. “Yeah.”

“You can go, like, change in my room if you want,” Chloe says, turning back to the stove. “That looks sticky.”

It really is starting to be. Max pulls away from Rachel carefully, so that she doesn’t lose her balance and slide off the countertop. A body hitting the floor would _definitely_ wake David and Joyce up, even if somehow, miraculously, they appear to have slept through everything else.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Max says, after finally wrestling the can of whipped cream away from Rachel and setting down on the furthest countertop in the room. Rachel stares longingly at it from her place on the opposite counter, but doesn’t move to retrieve it. Max can settle for that.

Creeping her way back up to Chloe’s room in the middle of the night is so unexpectedly familiar, even after all this time. Max leans into the feeling, lets it guide her up the stairs, surprised and pleased when she manages to avoid nearly all of the creaky steps by memory.

It’s kind of amazing that even after months of being back, there are things about herself, about Chloe, about this house that she’s re-discovering still. She wonders how long a homecoming is supposed to last.

Max has to check a few drawers before she finds the one Chloe’s using for her pajamas now. The t-shirt she grabs is old, holes starting to show in the hem and on one of the sleeves, but the fabric is whisper-soft. For pants she grabs the first pair she can find with a drawstring; it doesn’t matter if they’re a little long.

She takes the clothes to the bathroom, so she can wash off the lingering stickiness that’s seeped through her shirt. She pauses before the mirror, dressed in Chloe’s old clothes, face still adorned with the makeup Rachel had applied earlier, and something twists up tight in her chest and then expands, slow, warm. She feels giddy. She feels calm.

She rolls her dirty clothes up into a ball under her arm and slips out of the bathroom.

And runs directly into Joyce, looking sleepy and disheveled in a faded pink robe.

“Max?” Joyce blinks, bleary-eyed, voice gruff from sleep. Max opens her mouth to respond, but before she can get any words out there’s a thump from downstairs, followed by muffled laughter. Joyce sighs and clears her throat. “And Chloe… and Rachel.”

Max winces, shrugging helplessly. “Yeah. Sorry, Joyce.”

Joyce pinches the bridge of her nose and clicks her tongue. “Let me guess, they’re down there right now, drunk as skunks, doing their very best to wake up the whole house.”

“Well,” Max shifts, trying to think of the best way to answer without lying to Joyce or totally selling Chloe and Rachel out. “I don’t think they’re _trying_ to wake anyone up.”

“And you, Max?” Joyce’s gaze is intense, but not unkind, and Max feels herself stand a little straighter beneath it.

“I’m not trying to wake anyone up either?” Max says, unable to keep a note of anxiety out of her voice. She’s tired and not quite sure what the meaning was behind Joyce’s question, but pissing her off is the last thing Max ever wanted to do. Somehow it’s always _worse_ than making her own parents angry.

“No, Max,” Joyce clarifies, still searching Max’s face intently, though there’s a fondness that softens her voice now. “How much did you have to drink?”

“Oh, uh, none,” Max says. Joyce raises her eyebrows and Max leans in a little, insisting, “No, really, Joyce. I don’t drink, I just had a couple sodas.”

“Good,” Joyce sighs, letting herself smile. “I don’t think your poor mother would appreciate my delinquent daughter corrupting you.”

“Oh,” Max clenches her jaw tight, trying desperately not to react to Joyce’s phrasing and the particular mental images that Max’s brain conjured with it. “Nope. Nothing to worry about.”

“Go ahead and leave your clothes in the hamper, if you like,” Joyce says, nodding toward the bathroom. Then she turns and shuffles her way downstairs. Max obeys and follows a few paces behind, shooting Chloe a helpless shrug over Joyce’s shoulder as they enter the kitchen.

“Uh, hey mom,” Chloe smiles uneasily, sliding her last pancake out of the pan and onto the plate on the counter. “Midnight snack?”

“Chloe Elizabeth Price, it’s three in the damn morning.”

“Ohhh. Yeah, huh? It is,” Chloe says. “Wow. Time flies.”

“ _Chloe_.” The warning note in Joyce’s voice is enough to make Max squirm in sympathy. “I don’t need to tell you what would happen if you all woke David up raising a ruckus in here in the middle of the night.”

“We’ll be _really quiet_ , Mama J,” Rachel says sweetly. Her face is untroubled but the circles she traces into the tile with her toe belie her caution. “Promise.”

Joyce fixes Rachel with a long stare but finally relents with a weary shake of her head. “Please do, for all our sakes. _Goodnight_ , girls.”

They wait in silence for Joyce to ascend the stairs again. Max only realizes she’s holding her breath when it escapes her in a great sigh at the click of Joyce and David’s bedroom door.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Chloe sighs, shuffling over to Max and Rachel with her plate of pancakes. “I’m so fucking lucky she wants you guys to think she’s a cool mom. If it was just me in here she would have gone ballistic.”

“She _is_ a cool mom,” Rachel says.

“Uh, no way,” Chloe protests. “She wears her hair in a bun and she married that drill instructor asshole and she only listens to Guns n Roses songs from like forty years ago.”

“First of all,” Rachel says. “New GNR sucks, so. Of course. But also, shut up, the bun is stylish and practical.”

“And she has that cool ankle tattoo,” Max chimes in. “She let us watch _Friday the 13th_ that one time, too.”

Rachel grins, wide, and nods her head enthusiastically. “That’s right, Max. See, Chloe?”

“This is stupid,” Chloe grumbles. “I’ve got more tattoos than her.”

Max says, “You had to get it from somewhere” at the same time Rachel starts cooing about Chloe’s sleeve and how cool it is. When they realize they’re talking over each other, everyone busts up into another giggle fit, only managing to hush themselves when they realize they’ve become loud enough to wake Joyce again.

Rachel saunters and then stumbles into Chloe’s side. “We’re drunk,” she announces in sotto voce, “and we should probably eat these pancakes.”

Chloe nods her head several more times than necessary. “And then sleep. Like hibernate.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty late,” Max says. And then for some reason she keeps talking. “I should probably get going soon.”

“Dude, what?” Chloe asks, looking up from where she’s pouring way too much syrup over her pancakes.

“I should probably get back to Blackwell?”

“Max, you can’t go,” says Rachel, balancing a plate of pancakes on each hand. “We’ve got three plates!”

Max was nervous about assuming she should stay, and now they’ve _asked_ her to. It’s exactly what she wanted, so she doesn’t know why she keeps arguing. “I just… will there even be enough room? Where are we all going to sleep?”

“I’ve got a queen bed, genius,” Chloe says, shoving the near empty syrup bottle into Max’s hands. Max winces at the stickiness and carefully tips the bottle over one of the plates Rachel’s holding. “Big enough for three.”

“Yeah, Max,” Rachel says, a bit far away. Max glances up to see her staring and follows her gaze to Chloe, licking a stripe of syrup off of her thumb. “The more the merrier.”

“Uh,” Max says.

“C’mon,” Chloe smiles, hopeful and sweet. “You’re having a good time, right?”

Max sees Rachel’s head tilt out of the corner of her eye, knows they’re both looking at her.

“Yeah,” Max says.

A great time, actually.

The best in years, probably.

“Then stay,” Rachel says, bumping Max gently with her shoulder. 

“Okay,” Max says, feeling lit up from inside when Rachel and Chloe grin in response.

X.x.x

Max wakes up first.

She can’t see the clock, but she knows it must be early, because the light filtering in through the slats of Chloe’s blinds is soft and white. She blinks slowly, still groggy, preferring the darkness of her eyelids to even the gentle brightness of the new day.

She wants to move, but there’s not much room. She remembers sleepily piling into bed with Chloe and Rachel, probably only a few hours ago, ending up on the edge of the mattress.

Max remembers how big it had seemed years ago, when William brought it home from a garage sale. Chloe had been so eager to replace her childhood bed. Max had been impressed and a little jealous, marveling at how far she could stretch her limbs without hanging off the bed at all.

She stretches again, experimentally, but there’s nowhere to go; not with her arm already half-hanging off the mattress, not with the weight of Chloe’s leg draped over her thigh. It’s a pleasant pressure, warm and welcoming.

Max cranes her neck a little, to see the rest of the bed. Rachel’s turned away, facing the window, her body hidden beneath the blankets. Max wonders idly if Chloe’s other leg is wrapped up in Rachel’s.

She tugs the blanket up over her face and scoots in closer to Chloe’s warmth.

It’s only Saturday.

She can afford to sleep in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we got SO many reviews last week and they totally made our weeks and filled us with SO MUCH writing energy! please leave some more!
> 
> our tumblrs are [explosionshark](http://explosionshark.tumblr.com/) and [holdsteady](http://holdsteady.tumblr.com/)


	3. Not That

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hey,” Chloe murmurs, sounding sleepy and soft. She tilts her head up, just slightly, to nuzzle her forehead against Rachel’s jaw. “You sure you’re good?”
> 
> “Yeah,” Rachel lies, voice hoarse.
> 
> She hates feeling this insecure, not used to playing the part of the jealous bitch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, we've managed to keep a schedule for three weeks in a row! what the fuck is that about? hope you're ready to get sad!
> 
> chapter title from "not that" by summer vacation. fic title from "how to live here" by good luck.

Rachel sleeps through her alarm _and_ her late alarm. It takes the piercing trill of her emergency alarm across the room to drag her back to wakefulness, on her feet before she really knows what she’s doing, blankets still tangled up around her legs. She trips, but doesn’t fall over in her haste to reach the shrieking clock. It’s jarring, the scare sending her heart thumping and helping to clear some of the fog from her mind.

Hunched over her dresser, one hand still atop the snooze button, Rachel breathes through the headache she can feel building at her temples, mentally re-writing her morning schedule to account for the time she lost by over-sleeping. She can grab a quick shower, but she’ll probably be late for first period. The trade-off is worth it, she decides; her attendance this year has been good and Planter already has a soft spot for her, since she actually answers questions in class.

Worst case scenario, she’ll still take a demerit for tardiness over walking around feeling gross all day. Besides, only thing she _really_ has to worry about is making sure she’s on time for her second period Statistics exam.

Rachel doesn’t _rush._ Successful people don’t rush. It’s clumsy, it’s inefficient, and it usually sets you back more than it helps. Lateness, her parents had allowed, couldn’t always be helped, no matter how well prepared you were, but how she responds is always under her control. Rachel has come to accept most of the “important life lessons” they’d impressed upon her when she was younger as bullshit, but this one makes a kind of sense, actually.

Ninety percent of success is confidence, Rachel has found. Panicking, losing her cool, would only make things harder, so Rachel moves quickly but deliberately, freeing her legs from her blankets and tossing her bedclothes into a haphazard pile on the bed. She ignores the anxiety gnawing at the back of her brain, the frustration she feels at herself for oversleeping, and focuses on the goals directly in front of her.

Clothes, towels, and toiletries are no problem, all kept in the same area of her closet. The bed can stay unmade; she’ll take care of it on break or just leave it until tonight. Showering will be quick, fifteen minutes tops. She catches sight of herself in the mirror on the back of her door and mentally tacks on another half hour to her schedule for makeup; the bags under her eyes are huge.

She manages not to step on the white paper bag outside her door, but only just barely, foot catching the edge of the bag and crinkling it. She kneels down, tucking her towel and shower bag under one arm, to pick it up. She scans the bag, catches her name written in thick black marker and sets the bag on her bedside table, biting back her curiosity to keep on schedule.

There are girls in the hallway. Rachel fixes a rueful quirk to the corner of her mouth and makes sure her steps are quick but even as she passes them. Courtney catches her eye from across the hall and breaks off from Victoria and Taylor to fall into step next to her.

“Hey, Rach,” she says, giving Rachel a very obvious once-over and tutting gently in concern. Because God forbid anyone around here practice _any_ subtlety. “Late night?”

Courtney’s not so bad on her own, but Rachel can feel Victoria and Taylor staring after them as they continue down the hallway and she knows that the other girls sent Courtney to snoop. It’s all High School as hell and Rachel fights the urge to roll her eyes, unwilling to give them the satisfaction of seeing her annoyance. 

“Yeah, I’ve got a test today in Statistics and I’m taking the SATs again next weekend,” Rachel admits, knowing it won’t matter. The dominant rumor by lunch time will be that she stumbled out of her room sloppy and hungover.

Courtney’s eyes widen dramatically. “Again, huh?” she presses, a note of false sympathy entering her voice. “I guess they went pretty rough last time.” 

Rachel keeps her jaw loose, voice easy. “Oh, you know. A fourteen hundred’s not bad, but I thought I’d go for one more. Might as well keep the parents happy, right? USC might have already said yes, but daddy’s heart is really set on Princeton.”

Rachel’s last score was a 1350 and she had destroyed every Princeton application her father had ever mailed to her dorm, but Courtney has no way of knowing that.

“What did you get, Courtney?” Rachel asks, slowing her step just slightly to draw this out.

“Um, what?” Courtney asks, glancing back at Victoria and Taylor down the hall.

“On your SATs,” Rachel clarifies.

“Oh,” Courtney squirms. “I’m taking them next semester.”

“Wow!” Rachel exclaims, loudly enough for a few girls to look over in their direction. “That’s…”

“What?” Courtney asks, sharper now and this is way too easy. “That’s what?”

“Confident!” Rachel says after a pause, loading her voice with as much warmth as possible. She turns on her heel, leaning back against the wall next to the door to the showers and makes earnest eye contact with Courtney. “I really admire that, you know? That you like…really know where you’re going? And you can just afford to wing it like that. _Ugh_ , I wish that was me.”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Courtney hums and nods, smiling too wide as she shuffles back toward her clique, fingers flexing against the binder she draws up to her chest. “Yeah, totally. Uh, I should get back to Vic and Taylor and let you shower.”

“Okay,” Rachel calls, even though Courtney’s already walking away, shoulders stiff. “Bye Courtney!”

A few girls are milling about in front of the mirrors when Rachel enters the showers, and she spares them a smile and a jovial good morning, pretending that she hadn’t caught them staring at the giant, black **RACHEL AMBER GIVES GOOD HEAD** scrawled underneath the tampon machine on the wall.

The girls have cleared out by the time Rachel is done showering. With the bathroom empty, there’s nothing to stop Rachel from reaching into her shower bag and feeling around for the paint marker she’d nicked from the Art Lab last month. It’s nothing she’s not used to, but the graffiti tied a knot in her belly that fifteen minutes of hot water and an excess of aromatherapy body wash haven’t been able to ease, so she stops trying.

She steps up to the wall, shaking the pen before she uncaps it and sets the tip against the tiles over the writing. She’s better at this now than she was when she first started, hands steadier, lines cleaner. The last thing she needs is to get high on fumes before class, so Rachel holds her breath, exhaling slow as she steps back from the wall.

**RACHEL AMBER GIVES GREAT HEAD** isn’t her most creative amendment, but it’s something. It makes this hers now.

Rachel caps the pen and shoves it back into the bottom of her bag, biting her lip against a sudden wave of nostalgia. She remembers long afternoons spent in Mr. Keaton’s room, rehearsing until dusk to find Chloe waiting around in the hallway amid show posters defaced with angel wings and halos. Rachel never managed to catch her in the act, but the paint fumes on her clothes and the black smudges on Chloe’s fingers spoke for themselves.

She misses Chloe fiercely, which is probably silly. They’d texted just last night. Chloe had invited Rachel to join her and Max at the movies, but Rachel had declined to study for her test.

She hated Statistics on a good day. And she hated it with a particularly acute passion _now_ ; anxious about her upcoming test, and disappointed about the night out she had missed with her friends. Rachel’s grades in math had never disappointed, but they had also never come easily. She’d only agreed to take Statistics this year because her parents had insisted. She had enough Math credits to graduate, actually. She had wanted to add on another elective, Mrs. Hoida’s AP Poetry class, or perhaps Mr. Stern’s cultural anthropology course. But her parents had insisted. It would look better on a transcript, they’d said and her guidance counselor had agreed.

The hallway is deserted by the time Rachel makes it back to her room, so no one is around to see her stop short in front of her door, rooted to the floor by the shock of seeing her own face on her whiteboard. She recognizes Max’s loose, scratchy style before she even notices the initials scribbled under the picture confirming her responsibility. It’s a good sketch, actually. Rachel wonders if Max drew the portrait from memory or if she’d used a reference. She wonders if she’d be able to ask, or if Max would be embarrassed.

Rachel feels lighter when she slips inside her room, stowing her shower bag and tossing her pajamas into the hamper. Her gaze catches on the paper bag on her nightstand and she doesn’t hold herself back this time, slipping across the room to examine it properly.

**Rachel** , it says, with a heart at the end of her name. **Good luck on your test!**

Signed **xoxo Max**.

There are two slices of zucchini bread at the bottom of the bag, wrapped in a napkin. Rachel groans gratefully, reaching in and breaking off a corner of one slice to eat while she finishes getting ready. There’s no zucchini bread in the Blackwell Caf — Rachel knows Max must have went off-campus to the bakery on the next block to get this for her. She smiles, for real the first time all morning, as the tightness in her gut finally dissipates.

She can’t help but think of Max as she puts her makeup on, remembering how adorable and nervous she’d been the night of the party. She hadn’t really expected Max to agree when she’d asked to do her makeup before they left. Mostly she’d just been curious to see how Max would react.

Max is a wild card; more interesting, more unpredictable than she gives herself credit for, Rachel is convinced. Reading people, predicting them — those are skills Rachel has honed for years, ones she’s not ashamed to be proud of. But Max…

Max throws her off, sometimes. Not all the time, not every time, but often enough. And Rachel’s beginning to discover that she likes being surprised almost more than she likes to be right.

Rachel pauses on her way out the door, stopping to take a photo of the art on her door with her cellphone. She’s already late, but she lingers in the hallway, chewing slow, eyes tracing the lines of the sketch. After a long moment she sends the photo to Max.

_**Thanks!**_ she writes. _**You totally saved my morning, Super Max.**_

She stops again just outside the door to the stairwell, fishing her phone out of her pocket, impulsively.

_**Hey, Priceless**_ , she types. _**About to make this exam my bitch. Celebrate after? My treat.**_

Rachel throws in a kissy face and then deletes it.

Not Chloe’s style.

x.x.x

It’s just when Rachel has the Price kitchen cupboard open and a full package of Oreos in hand that she hears the jangle of keys in the front door.

Her first thought, as she eases the cupboard closed, is that it’s David. She’s never felt any particular apprehension about standing up to him, neither at school nor when his massive hard-on for ruining innocuous slumber parties was waving in the wind. But the stove reads quarter to two in digital green, and the thought of how he might treat Chloe if he caught either of them downstairs at this hour sets Rachel’s teeth on edge.

Then she turns the corner.

Of course it’s only Joyce, presumably coming off a late shift at the diner, and Rachel’s so relieved that she follows her immediate instinct to fling herself into a hug on first sight, Oreos and all.

“Mama J!”

Joyce freezes in surprise, but her smile is fond when she gently separates herself and says, “Someone’s stealing cookies from the cookie jar, I see.”

“I’m on a top secret snacks mission from upstairs,” Rachel confirms.

“Well, then, you’d better get a glass of milk while I put this roast away for David. _Quietly_.”

And it’s nice, working side by side, lit only by the bulb over the stove, by the intermittent glow of the refrigerator opening and closing. Rachel’s seen things get rocky between Chloe and her mom, seen the big fights, actively taken Chloe’s side when Joyce chose to defend David’s bullshit. But she can’t deny the moments like these, putting away leftovers and pouring glasses of milk, free french fries at Two Whales, rides back to Blackwell in the morning even after Chloe had dropped out, how they make Rachel feel like part of the family. Like she’s home.

It’s what she’s missed. Feeling normal, feeling sure.

“She’s not going to use a fork, you know,” says Joyce, breaking the train of thought clean in two.

Rachel slides the cutlery drawer shut and twirls the fork in question between her fingers. “I know. But when she drops a cookie I can fish it out without getting milk _everywhere_.”

She busies herself with collecting a few napkins as she waits for Joyce’s reply, but gets antsy when it doesn’t come. She turns, finds Joyce staring at her, looking tired and soft with just the dim light of the foyer streaming through the kitchen doorway. “You take good care of her, Rachel,” Joyce says, quiet. “I appreciate that. She can be quite a handful.”

Joyce’s words twist something up hard in Rachel’s chest. She finds herself looking away from Joyce’s eyes, unexpectedly bashful. She’s less sure of that now than she’s ever been, and Joyce’s gratitude makes her uncertainty sting even more. “Nothing I can’t handle, Mama J,” Rachel says, which at least used to be true. And then, because she knows _this_ still, “She’s worth it.”

“Well,” Joyce says, kissing Rachel’s temple as she passes, “you girls have a good night. But keep it down.”

Rachel bites the inside of her cheek and just nods, willing herself not to point out the subtext in Joyce’s choice of words, and after a couple of minutes’ buffer time heads upstairs herself.

Chloe’s stretched out sideways on her bed, legs hung over the side and scrolling through her phone, but she sits up when Rachel comes through the door bearing cookies. “What took you so long? I got mad munchies.”

“I ran into Joyce,” Rachel says, taking a seat next to Chloe and laying the Oreos on the bed in between them. The milk and the fork she passes off. “Didn’t know she was cool with you fucking in here.”

True to form, Chloe sets the fork aside on her bookshelf. Not so true to form, she doesn’t laugh, just sort of stares out of the corner of her eye, and then, “What?” around a mouthful of cookie.

Rachel’s smile falters a little, but she doesn’t want things to get weird. Not again. “She told me to have fun and keep it down,” she explains, grabs a cookie of her own to stop herself from fidgeting. “So what’s the deal? Do I look like a screamer?”

“She just doesn’t want to deal with David waking up,” Chloe says drily, and now she isn’t looking at her at all.

And, okay, maybe it wasn’t her _best_ joke ever, but a few months ago she’s sure Chloe would have laughed along anyway.

Wouldn’t she have?

Frustrated, Rachel tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, just to give her hands something to do. She wants to reach out, to shake Chloe by the shoulders, to ask her _what is going on with you?_

Instead, she just takes a bite out of her cookie and says, “So, I saw the 1969 Chevy Midlife Crisis back outside earlier. Did he actually get that piece of shit up and running?”

“Yeah, huge thanks to me because I _do_ actually know what a spark plug does.”

Rachel tries to envision Chloe helping David out of the goodness of her heart, but she just ends up with her eyebrows knit together in confusion. “What exactly does Sergeant Shithead have on you that got you to lend a hand restoring the Overcompensation Mobile?”

“My mother.” Chloe’s words come out on a heavy sigh, and she flops onto her back again.

Rachel has to stop herself from reaching out to steady the cup of milk as she goes, instead lying down herself, twisting onto her side to face Chloe.

“He’s too much of an idiot to figure out how to fix the damn thing himself and way too cheap to take it to a shop,” Chloe continues. “I’m tired of seeing him hulk out over stupid shit, being so on edge, so I thought I’d just take care of it. At least this way mom doesn’t have to deal with temper tantrums every day.”

Sweet and surly and so protective, always taking care of people in ways so small she never expects them to notice, _that’s_ the Chloe that Rachel knows. Warmth blooms in her chest, melts the tension inside, spreads out to her fingertips as she reaches out, swiping her thumb across a smear of chocolate on the corner of Chloe’s mouth. “You’re so good,” she says, and immediately flushes, because she didn’t really mean to say it out loud.

Finally Chloe chuckles, a soft little bark of a laugh, but Rachel knows it’s the kind meant to be armour when she follows it with, “Fuck off.”

“Hey, no.” Rachel leans up on her elbow so she can make eye contact, and with her free hand she does reach across to hold Chloe’s milk in place, twining their fingers together in the process. “I know you don’t think anyone notices, but you do so much for everyone, Priceless. Like with Max.”

“Max?” Chloe licks her lips, and it stings a little to see the way her throat bobs, but Rachel presses on.

“Yeah. Like, she’s sort of this wallflower even though she’s majorly cute and way more interesting than she gives herself credit for. So I try to pull her out of her comfort zone a bit, and I don’t think...I think it’s good for her, in a way?” God, she’s supposed to be telling Chloe about how good she is, not explaining _herself_. But Chloe seems to be following, so she keeps going. “But I don’t really know where the line is. And you do, and you give her an out every time. At the bonfire? That was really...good. You’re good.”

Chloe’s hand has tightened noticeably around her glass, tensing under Rachel’s fingertips. “Yeah, speaking of,” she starts, then clears her throat. “I wanted to thank you. Max showed me the pictures she took of you and your model friend. They looked great. And she was really excited that you wanted to work with her. So, y’know. Thanks.”

Rachel winces, remembering that tense moment on the beach, and withdraws her hand. “Yeah, sorry. I didn’t know you and Rosa had, uh, history. If I had I wouldn’t have brought her over like that.”

“It’s fine,” Chloe says, shoving another cookie into her mouth. “And we don’t.”

Rachel waits for her to elaborate.

She does not.

“Okay. Well, I’m sorry my friend objectified you then,” Rachel says. It’s a bad save, she knows, and a little late at that, but she absolutely cannot steer this night off the rails just when they’re getting back on track. “But yeah, I think Max and I are getting on okay. She brought me breakfast this morning! You’re really missing out not living in the dorms anymore, you know.”

“Sometimes I wake up and I have all these ideas about how I could deface Victoria Chase’s whiteboard,” Chloe says wistfully, “and I just can’t act on ‘em.”

That’s more like it. Rachel grins. “Oh, dude, speaking of Victoria, her embarrassing little graffiti crusade continues.”

“Oh yeah?” Chloe asks, kicking her legs out a little. Milk splashes up to the lip of the glass for one precarious moment but doesn’t spill over. “What’s the scoop on Rachel Amber today?”

“I give good head, apparently,” Rachel preens. “Her lines were very sloppy, by the way. A total disgrace to the art of tagging, I was insulted on your behalf.”

Chloe’s laughter is genuine this time. “Amateur. Also, _what?_ How the hell would she know?”

“She wouldn’t, outside of her imagination, but she’s clearly spent a lot of time thinking about it. She hates me but she wants me. The whole thing makes me feel very Blair Waldorf.”

“Does that make her Chuck Bass?”

“Chloe Price,” Rachel says, scandalized, “are you telling me you watch Gossip Girl?”

“No,” Chloe deadpans.

Rachel pops a brow. “Uh-huh. Anyway, yes. They do both dress like eccentric senior citizens. The difference is I won’t actually fuck her.”

“Oh really? What happened to ‘oh it must be nice getting laid whenever you want, boys are boring, who will save me from this dry spell’? Victoria would so be down.”

The sting of Chloe’s words is sudden and so unexpected that it throws her for a moment. She feels the smile begin to slip off her face before she can school her expression, so she follows the feeling, pulling a face of exaggerated disgust. 

“Please,” Rachel snorts, rolling onto her back so she doesn’t have to make eye contact anymore. “Grandma cardigans aside, she’s always such a dick. And not the kind I want inside me.”

Chloe laughs, tosses off another line about how that’s never stopped Rachel before. But she’s ready this time, smiles through the accelerated pounding of her heart. The lines of Chloe’s body are relaxed enough, her smile wide and easy enough, for Rachel to know she’s not serious. Getting stoned and giving each other shit is a pretty standard night for them, which makes the caginess Rachel feels now so alarming.

She feels see-through and paper thin, even with Chloe looking away now, firing off some other quip about Victoria’s fashion sense to her ceiling. She knows Chloe’s joking, but the comment’s like a speck of dust caught in her eye, something she can’t seem to blink away. Rachel wonders if Chloe really thinks she’s the kind of person who would fuck just anyone, regardless of how they treated her friends.

“Hey.” The pressure of Chloe’s fingers on her shoulder is almost as soft as her voice. Rachel rolls over, trying to be casual, and raises a questioning eyebrow in response. The corner of Chloe’s bottom lip shrinks, and Rachel knows she’s biting it from the inside. “You cool?”

“Yeah,” Rachel says, releasing all the turmoil crowding her chest in a single heavy sigh. Or trying to. It feels better, anyway, when she decides to let it go. “The weed’s just really hitting me. Can we put on some music?”

Chloe hesitates for a moment and then nods once, sharp. She offers Rachel one last cookie and then slides off the bed, downing the rest of the glass of milk and setting the Oreo package on top of her dresser. “Alright, but quiet, okay?”

“Okay,” Rachel breathes, letting herself melt back into the bed. She stretches out, so that by the time Chloe returns, there’s nowhere else to be on the bed that isn’t up against Rachel’s body. Chloe doesn’t seem to mind, settling down with her head against Rachel’s shoulder.

She doesn’t move when Rachel angles her head closer still, breathing in her scent: weed and evergreen. She’s used to it, after all this time. Getting high always makes her kind of needy, desperate to be close to someone. She uses the excuse to reach out, running her fingers through Chloe’s hair, letting the soft strands fall through her fingers like water.

“Mmm, your roots are coming in again,” Rachel says into Chloe’s hair. Chloe nods, breathing out against her collarbone in response. Rachel lets her eyes flutter shut at the sensation, a wave of relief rolling through her, because this feels _good_ , this feels normal, this feels like before.

There’s a fine edge of guilt to her relief, at missing the way things used to be before Max came back to town. She _likes_ Max, actually. She likes what Max being back has done for Chloe, she likes passing Max in the hallways of the dorm at night, likes grabbing a seat close to her in the classes they share, likes those nights when the three of them pile into Chloe’s truck to find someplace to waste time together.

What she misses is not having to compete for Chloe’s attention, though she knows it’s stupid to think of it as a competition at all. Especially when it’s one she’s losing.

The girls in Chloe’s life have all been transient, a breeze so paltry it couldn’t even shake the foundation of this thing she and Chloe have built. But Max is a hurricane. A game changer. And the worst part is, she genuinely doesn’t seem to realize it. Which means she isn’t even _trying_ to be.

Despite herself, Rachel feels herself tensing up again, releasing a frustrated puff of air against Chloe’s scalp.

“Hey,” Chloe murmurs, sounding sleepy and soft. She tilts her head up, just slightly, to nuzzle her forehead against Rachel’s jaw. Her left hand falls across Rachel’s hip, thumb working a slow, soothing circle into the sliver of skin between her shirt and the waistband of her pants. “You sure you’re good?”

“Yeah,” Rachel lies, voice hoarse. Cotton-mouth. She thinks about the fifth of whiskey stashed somewhere in Chloe’s closet longingly, but makes no move to get it. Not with Chloe still rubbing those patterns into her hip.

She hates feeling this insecure, not used to playing the part of the jealous bitch. She and Chloe have never held each other back, have never demanded more from each other than the other was willing to give. It’s something Chloe likes about her, she knows, that she can be cool. That things can be easy. That they know how to be there for each other without fencing each other in.

“David’s not gonna be an issue,” Chloe says.

“What?” Rachel asks.

“Ganj has got you straight paranoid, dude,” Chloe says, reaching one long arm over Rachel’s body to tap her temple lightly. “David’s totally out of it. If he was gonna bust us tonight, it would have been way earlier. We’re in the clear.”

“Oh.”

“You’re stiff as a board,” Chloe says and she’s right. Rachel shuts her eyes, wills her limbs loose again. Chloe breathes out a puff of laughter against her neck in response. “Alright, Angel. Alright.”

The full-body cuddling, the fingers on her hip, the breath on her neck, the fucking _nickname_. It’s all too much, and the energy needs to go somewhere, so Rachel uses it to flip their positions.

For a moment it’s hard not to think of that night in the truck the month before, how Chloe had loomed over her looking smug as anything. Rachel wonders if she looked anything like this, stretched out and pliant, pupils blown wide in the low light. She wonders if Chloe’s breath slowed this much in her lungs, if Chloe’s heart seized up this hard in her chest. Rachel lets the moment hang, with her hips settled just over Chloe’s, knees dipping into the side of the bed on either side, and wonders if Chloe felt this safe, too, this certain.

But the illusion of control only takes her so far; she’s still taken in by those soft eyes, the dry smooth hands still encircling her waist. She finds herself hoping for answers in the eye contact, as though the endless blue might eventually provide some certainty, some assurance beyond a shadow of a doubt that Chloe wants this again too.

Again.

As if Rachel’s ever felt this transparent before.

It occurs to her that maybe she’s the one giving something away, and she drops her gaze to Chloe’s lips to escape, slides her fingers up along Chloe’s jaw. In the end she isn’t sure if she leans in to maintain control or just because it feels right.

Chloe exhales just before their lips meet and it tastes like smoke just the same as her hair smells, only warmer. Closer. So close that Rachel feels like she could draw it into herself and bottle it up for safekeeping, if she only opened up. And then there’s the gentle drag of chapped lips and her tongue is in Chloe’s mouth and she’s lost in it, smoke and chocolate wafer and something more human, the vague tang of her.

It’s nice, for once, just to kiss. Not to be drunk and angling for something she can pretend not to fully remember in the morning. To set aside the questions they don’t ask and the jokes that hurt and pour everything into one point of contact.

This is a language Rachel knows.

This is a place Rachel feels at home, with her lips moving and Chloe’s hair under her fingers and Chloe’s hands on her own and then tightening around her wrists and pushing her away and suddenly it isn’t anything Rachel knows at all. Rachel goes easy, pulling away from Chloe more curious than alarmed. Chloe’s never pushed her away before, not once they’ve started.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, still a little dazed. She pulls her wrists gently from Chloe’s grasp, sliding her hand down so their palms are level, to twine their fingers together.

Chloe exhales and this time it’s harsh as she rolls out from under Rachel, sits at the edge of the bed where Rachel can’t see her face. “I’m just tired, dude. Not really in the mood.”

Rachel clears her throat and moves in the opposite direction, gathering her legs up, making herself smaller on the centre of the bed. She flexes her empty hands in the loose fabric of her pajama pants. “The mood?” she parrots, hoping that the tiny tremor in her voice isn’t noticeable. 

The fact that Chloe is turned away from her makes it worse when her voice comes out in impenetrable monotone. “I have to get up in like five hours for work, and I can’t,” Chloe lets out a breath, maybe hesitance, “fuck you right now. Can we please just go to sleep?”

Everything wells up inside and Rachel just starts to feel the sting of oncoming tears before she bites her lip, shoving the shock of it into the background. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s go to sleep.” Her face feels hot and the thrum of her own heartbeat is so loud in her ears. She runs a hand through her hair, searching for purchase and finding none, licks her lips only to find that the leftover taste of Chloe’s chapstick has soured. “Wouldn’t want you to miss work.”

“Cool,” Chloe says, and then she’s off the bed, halfway to the door already. “I’ve gotta piss.”

Rachel’s a little afraid that if she opens her mouth too much will come out, so she doesn’t. Instead she takes the time to find her way under the covers and curl up on her side on one edge of the bed.

She makes sure that when Chloe returns she won’t be able to see her face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the solid schedule is probably a direct result of all the excellent feedback y'all have been leaving. we get SO jazzed every time someone cares to review this project. please tell us what you like or don't like!
> 
> our tumblrs are [holdsteady](http://holdsteady.tumblr.com/) and [explosionshark](http://explosionshark.tumblr.com/)


	4. Breaker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, it's here! apologies for the brief hiatus--real life stuff got real and hampered progress a bit, but to make up for it, we're presenting you with this absolutely monstrous chapter. once again you're gonna want to get ready to get sad, because i know i wasn't ready writing it. (it'll get better, we promise.)
> 
> chapter title from "breaker" by low. i also recommend, specifically for the last scene, "ava" by famy. fic title from "how to live here" by good luck.

The library doors haven’t even swung shut before Rachel’s calling Chloe, phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear, fishing around in her bag for the sunglasses she’ll need outside.

“Hey.”

Chloe’s voice is low and warm, a little raspy. It’s just after noon on a Saturday, so Rachel knows she’s probably still in bed. She wonders if the phone call woke Chloe up, or if she was already conscious, stretched out on her back, sheets kicked down to her ankles, fumbling with her lighter and one of the joints Rachel rolled for her a few nights ago.

“Hey,” Rachel says, swallowing back the image. Her fingers finally close around the plastic frames of her glasses and she draws them out, puts them on. “I’m done.”

“Sweet.” There’s a pause; Rachel can hear the flick of a lighter, Chloe’s deep inhale. When she speaks her voice is strained, just the barest amount of air released to carry her words. “How’d it go?”

“Good, I think,” Rachel shoots a brilliant smile and a wink to the boy she passes on her way out of the building when he pauses to hold the door for her. “But if I never see another Scantron again in my life it’ll be too soon.”

Chloe breathes out long and slow into the receiver and Rachel catches herself inhaling on reflex.

“This should keep your dad off your back for a bit, at least. Right?”

That’s the hope, anyway. Her mother has been calling again lately, making noise about having her back home for the holidays. On one hand, it would be nice to go back to Long Beach for Christmas. She misses the lights around the marina at night, the boat parade in Naples, the palm trees and the ferris wheel at the Pike.

On the other hand, just thinking about being stuck back in that house with just her parents, acting like everything’s just _normal,_ makes her kind of want to lie face down on the floor and scream.

“Yeah, it should,” Rachel tells Chloe, pushing the thought out of her mind. It’s not a lie, it’s positive thinking. “Did you re-up from Frank? I thought you’d be out by now.”

“I bought another dime last night,” Chloe says. “But this is the shit Justin’s brother brought up from Cali. He owed me, so I made him hook it up.”

“Jesse’s back in town?”

“Yeah, this week, I guess.”

“That shit was dank last time,” Rachel says, wistful. She doesn’t know Jesse well, but she thinks he’s alright. He and his girlfriend grow weed together out of Humboldt County and they make a small killing cutting into Frank’s business every time they come home. Jesse’s kind of scummy; he’s always staring at her tits, but he's never actually made a move on her, which is more than Rachel can say for every other dealer she’s had. Besides, he comps her half the time anyway. Calls it a homesickness discount.

“Come over,” Chloe says and some of the tightness in Rachel’s chest uncoils and floats away. They haven’t talked about the last time she stayed over. Sometimes at night, lying around before bed, she’ll think about it when she’s trying not to — _I can’t fuck you right now —_ but lately things feel almost normal between them again.

She _really wants_ things to feel normal between them again.

“I can’t,” Rachel sighs. “I’ve got an ASB meeting in twenty minutes. We’re planning the winter art showcase.”

The pause between them hangs long enough for Rachel to know that Chloe’s disappointed.

“You’re so busy lately,” she says, finally. The lighter flicks again.

“It’ll get better after the showcase.” Rachel isn’t sure if that’s true, exactly, but she wants to be able to promise Chloe something. It’s a better response than the _I’m surprised you noticed_ that nearly leapt off her tongue instead. Rachel pauses in the shade of a tree, breathes out the bitterness crouched in the back of her throat.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Rachel says. “Hey, come out with me later.”

“Come out where?”

“There’s a party. It’s at Hayden’s place, you know, the big house on Oakwood? You got drunk and fell into the pool last year.”

“Oh, yeah,” Chloe says. And then, “ _Fuck_ , I hate Blackwell parties. Let’s do something else.”

“No,” Rachel corrects her. “You hate Blackwell _students._ You love Blackwell _parties_ , the booze is always better. Besides, his brother goes to BCC, so it won’t just be Blackwell kids.”

“Yeah, okay,” Chloe says and Rachel lets loose a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “When am I coming to get you?”

“Nine,” Rachel says. “Hey, look, Max can’t go.”

“What?”

“I mean, I already asked her,” Rachel continues, nervous suddenly. “She and Dana were in the hall this morning, so I invited them. Max said she had a thing.”

“Oh,” Chloe says. “Does Dana need a ride?”

“Uh,” Rachel feels thrown by the switch in topic. “No, I think she’s driving herself. Or else Juliet will probably take them. I guess I could ride up with them.”

“Why would you if I’m taking you?” Chloe asks.

“Oh. I don’t know, I guess I thought— “ Thought Chloe might not want to take her without Max there. “Nevermind. So. Nine?”

They agree, but Rachel isn’t at all surprised when Chloe texts her from the Blackwell parking lot at just a quarter after eight. Chloe declines Rachel’s offer to come inside and wait and it’s almost a relief, because Max is just down the hall and Rachel has to wonder if Chloe’s easy acquiescence to go to the party would hold up against those big blue eyes, that sea of freckles.

She was almost ready anyway, so it’s not long before she’s tapping on the glass of Chloe’s truck, sliding into the seat after Chloe reaches across to open the door for her.

“Hi,” Rachel says and then hesitates. Chloe looks good, dressed for the occasion: tight black jeans, artfully ripped in just the right places, and a half-tucked band tee peeking out from under a bomber jacket, just enough to display the graphic. It’s a look crafted to seem effortless, just barely a step up from Chloe’s usual ensemble, but Rachel knows well enough to tell that the outfit’s a deliberate choice. She wonders what it means, if Chloe’s out tonight to pull. Her stomach flips uneasily at the thought.

“Hey,” Chloe says, a little awkwardly, and Rachel realizes she’s been staring. “You good?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Rachel nods, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She takes a steadying breath and pushes the air out in an exaggerated sigh as she sinks back into the seat. “A little fried. Long day, you know.”

Chloe nods, relaxes a little as she starts the truck. “Hey, do me a favor.”

“Yeah?” Rachel has to fight a little to get the seat belt locked.

“Pop the glove box for me,” Chloe says. “Fetch me my driving gloves.”

Rachel doesn’t even remember how this particular stupid joke started, but hearing it from Chloe tonight dissolves the tension in her shoulders. It’s dumb, probably painfully unfunny to anyone else but that’s kind of _the point._ It’s theirs and theirs alone.

“ _Chloe_ ,” Rachel sing-songs, dragging the vowels out and grinning widely as she retrieves the bag of weed Chloe had stashed for her. She leans across the space between them as far as the seat belt allows, one hand settling on Chloe’s jaw and tugging her close enough for Rachel to press a loud, wet kiss to the center of her cheek. “You _shouldn’t_ _have.”_

Chloe laughs, and it isn’t until she detangles herself from Rachel’s grip, hiking up one shoulder to wipe the moisture off her face that Rachel realizes what she’s done, how awkward it could have made things. But Chloe seems nonchalant, lazily insisting, “Chill out, you’re gonna get us killed.”

“God,” Rachel sighs, fumbling around inside the glovebox until she finds Chloe’s pipe. “You had no idea how much I needed this. Do you mind if I…?”

“I might have had some idea,” Chloe says, smug. “And yeah, go ahead, just watch out for cops, okay?”

“I honestly thought you would have smoked all of Jesse’s shit before I saw you tonight,” Rachel admits, struggling to light the bowl through a turn. The first hit is a little harsh, too much, too fast, and she hates the way her eyes water, hopes it won’t fuck up her makeup. But it feels _so_ fucking good to cut loose; it feels so good to be here with Chloe right now.

“Roll down your window,” Chloe says, elbow already pumping as she cranks the handle on her side. “And save a little for me. Left or right at Stilwell?”

It’s not a far drive. Chloe cruises by the house, but they’re early and she keeps going, ending up at a park a half mile away. It’s a good enough place to leave the truck, quiet, empty. They roll the windows back up and smoke the rest of the bowl together.

By the time they start the walk back up to the party, Rachel feels loose and bubbly. There’s a soft fuzz to the edge of her thoughts, a floaty feeling in her limbs that only heightens the pleasant buzz that’s starting to settle in from the couple mouthfuls of whisky she and Chloe had shared from her flask.

Chloe seems in good spirits too, walking just a few steps behind her. Rachel likes the way their shadows look when they pass under street lamps, long and lanky and never not touching.

The easiness between them doesn’t falter when they get to the party. Rachel’s relieved, half-convinced that Chloe’s moodiness would resurface as soon as they hit a crowd, but if anything she’s more relaxed. She fetches them both drinks, hardly says anything mean when Rachel drags her around to say hi to the friends she catches sight of.

The Vortex Club is stupid, Rachel knows. Just a bunch of snotty, rich teenagers circle jerking about how cool and privileged they are. Nothing much different from the country clubs that her parents had always delighted in. But some of the people were actually pretty decent, once you got to know them. Rachel’s grateful Chloe keeps the whining to a minimum as they make their rounds.

“You’re being _very_ good tonight,” Rachel grins, loose and a little reckless, reaching up and taking Chloe’s face in her hands as she speaks.

“Glad you noticed,” Chloe says, huskier than Rachel expected. Rachel’s heartbeat picks up; she bites her lip against the warmth that rolls through her at Chloe’s tone. She’s not gonna make this weird. “Have I earned a reward?”

Oh, sweet Jesus.

“You’ve earned a dance,” Rachel chirps, spinning around and seizing Chloe’s sleeve loosely, guiding her out toward the living room, where all the music is.

It’s nice just being with Chloe this way, pressed up into each other in the middle of a crowd, but feeling totally alone together. It hits Rachel all at once just how long it’s been since they’ve been out like this, just the two of them. She realizes with an ache so strong it’s actually physical that she’s _missed it_ tremendously. She’s missed Chloe’s warmth pressed into her back, Chloe’s hips swaying in time with hers, Chloe’s breath in her hair, Chloe’s hands splayed out over her belly.

Rachel spots Logan in the crowd, catches his eye just as he notices her, and groans when he takes that as a cue to make his way over. Grimacing, Rachel twists in place, noting with delight how Chloe’s eyes widen as they’re suddenly face to face. She twines her arms over Chloe’s shoulders, twisting her fingers together so her hands are locked in place over Chloe’s neck. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Chloe repeats, a beat late. She doesn’t pull back, though, just adjusts her grip on Rachel’s hips, fingers flexing at her waistband.

“Don’t look now, but Logan’s on his way over,” Rachel says and predictably Chloe’s eyes immediately shoot up over her shoulder. “I _said_ don’t look.”

Chloe shrugs, lifting Rachel’s arms where they’re braced on her shoulders. “Why is Logan on his way over?”

“Because I was nice to him for half a second in Science this week and now he thinks I’m into him,” Rachel keeps her voice light, like it’s a joke, but the whole thing gets kind of exhausting sometimes. Especially when she’s just trying to have a nice night out with her best friend.

“You need to work on that,” Chloe murmurs.

“On what?”

“Your bad habit of being nice to men,” Chloe says and Rachel snorts, burying a laugh in Chloe’s shoulder. “Hey, I’m just saying. I’ve never had that problem.”

“I _clearly recall_ you having that problem a few times,” Rachel says. “Of course, that was before that time you overheard Zach Riggins saying you had a nice ass and you pushed him in the fountain for it.”

Chloe’s laugh pours out over Rachel’s ear, warm and low. “Oh yeah. Okay, coast is clear, Logan’s turned back.”

Rachel’s reluctant to pull away, but she goes, figuring that was her cue. She’s surprised when Chloe’s grip tightens on her hips to keep her in place and it must show on her face when she looks up.

Chloe swallows hard, tongue darting out to wet her bottom lip. “Rach.”

“Yeah?” Rachel hates how breathless she sounds. Totally transparent.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Chloe says.

Rachel nods, absently. There’s only one reason Chloe would want to go upstairs. 

_I can’t fuck you right now._

_I can’t fuck you right now._

_I can’t fuck you right now._

It’s all Rachel can think about, so she pauses, tugs Chloe’s wrist a little to slow her down.

“Hey,” she leans in close so that her lips brush the shell of Chloe’s ear as she speaks, so Chloe knows she still wants this. She just needs a minute. “Wait, let’s get another drink.”

Rachel sees the impression of Chloe’s tongue pressed hard against the inside of her cheek while she pauses, thinking. 

“Sure.”

Rachel’s hand feels hot, locked loosely around Chloe’s wrist as they wind their way back through the house, to the kitchen. There’s the keg that Hayden’s brother secured, but Rachel bypasses it, looking for something stronger. The massive bowl of punch in the corner should do the trick, bright red and sickly sweet smelling. She always hates this stuff at parties, but there are times, like this one, where she needs the toxic amounts of sugar and hard liquor more than she needs to like what she’s doing to herself.

Chloe wrinkles her nose when Rachel ladles the punch into two red solo cups, but she accepts the drink she’s offered anyway, sipping it tepidly, leaned back into the counter. Chloe watches with hooded eyes, fingers drumming against the countertop, as Rachel tips her head back, downs half of the cup in one go.

“Thirsty?” Chloe asks, sarcastic, but there’s a curious slant to her brow that makes the hair’s on the back of Rachel’s neck stand up.

Rachel just nods, filling her cup back up to the brim and taking another long sip. “Yeah.”

Chloe doesn’t know the house, so she walks behind Rachel, fingertips tucked into the back of Rachel’s jeans as they ascend the stairs to the guest room. Rachel nurses her drink as they go. It doesn’t burn on the way down as much anymore, just warms her up inside. The sugar is still too strong, overwhelming, but she doesn’t think Chloe will mind. She loves sweet things.

Rachel’s not quite ready for the sudden tension, how fast and hard her heart starts beating, when they’re finally alone. She drains her drink just for something to do with her hands and sets the empty cup down on a dresser.

Chloe doesn’t do anything, doesn’t say anything, just stands there in the dark with her big hungry eyes and waits for Rachel to move.

So, she does.

She draws in close, draping her arms around Chloe’s neck like before, like when they were dancing. Only now she doesn’t reign in the impulse that tells her to lean in further, to catch Chloe’s lips in the kind of kiss Rachel’s only ever had with her. It’s slow and deep and warm and it makes her _ache ache ache_ inside her chest for more.

Chloe’s arms wrap around her waist and she’s tilting her head, angling down and licking hungrily into Rachel’s mouth. Rachel moans, and it’s reflex, but she feels the way it makes Chloe’s fingers dig in harder at the small of her back and she likes it so she does it again, louder.

Chloe finally pulls away, groaning, and paints a hasty wet trail of kisses across Rachel’s jaw, down her neck. “Fuck, Rachel.”

A few months ago she would have laughed, would have teased _Yes, fuck Rachel_ , would have made this into a game. But now she hesitates, head still spinning, not sure what to do.

Because there it is again, an echo in the back of her mind, _I can’t fuck you right now_ and it kind of feels like the sort of thing she should ask about.

But Rachel has waited _too long_ , it’s all bad timing. If she asks now, she’ll ruin this. 

Who cares if Chloe didn’t want to fuck her then? Chloe wants to fuck her now. Chloe has wanted to fuck her all the other times they’ve had sex. Through all the long months between them and all the other girls that Chloe’s fucked and all the boys Rachel has kissed but hasn’t been able to bring herself to touch, Chloe has always, eventually, wanted Rachel back.

That’s what matters. That’s all that should matter.

Chloe’s here and she’s biting a bruise into Rachel’s collarbone and she _wants_ her.

 _It can be simple,_ Rachel tells herself, threading a hand through Chloe’s hair and gasping, arching up into her teeth. It has been before, and if she just holds onto this now, maybe it can be again.

She holds onto it as she walks them back into the wardrobe, hitting it hard enough to make herself gasp. She holds onto it as she helps Chloe shuck her jacket off, as she flicks open the buckle of Chloe’s belt and pulls the leather out through the loops in her jeans.

She holds onto it, whispering, “Shhh, let me,” when Chloe slides her hands up the back of Rachel’s shirt, tries to retake control of the situation with a searing kiss that almost, _almost_ works.

She holds onto it when she finally works open the button and slides the zipper down on Chloe’s jeans, just the sound of their breathing in the room now, the distant thrum of the music downstairs, footfalls in the hall.

She holds onto it when the door swings open, a harsh beam of light piercing the darkness, when she sees Max’s shocked face, hears Chloe’s resounding gasp, feels her warmth and her solidness ripped away.

But it’s gone when she sees Chloe cursing, fumbling to fasten her jeans. It’s gone when Max stammers out an apology, tries to stumble back into the hall but only bangs her elbow on the doorway, then just _stands_ there, frozen in place.

It’s gone when she reaches out to touch Chloe’s shoulder and Chloe jerks away from her, _furious,_ spitting out, “Not _fucking_ now, Rachel.”

It’s all gone.

It’s not fair.

x.x.x

“You got up an hour early to leave baked goods at her doorstep?” Fernando’s Skype icon lights up on Max’s screen. “As a fellow bisexual, that’s some gay shit, Max.”

An hour and a half deep into a catch-up call with Kristen and Fernando, and they haven’t stopped interrogating her yet.

“I’m more concerned with the sketch,” Kristen says, voice raised to be heard over the din of her brothers in the background. “And the fact that she took a photo of the sketch. And the fact that she called you Super Max.”

Max is so, so grateful her webcam isn’t on and they can’t see her blush. “That doesn’t mean anything. Lots of people have called me that. Even Chloe calls me Super Max.”

The smug grin that Kristen’s probably wearing is nearly audible through the laptop. “Case in point.”

“All right, all right. My life isn’t Twilight, guys,” Max says, willing her voice to sound assertive rather than desperate.

“Except for the fact that your dreamy best friend is totally sweet on you,” Kristen says. “Also, Nando owes me five bucks, he totally thought you slept through all of those movies.”

Fernando chooses then to pipe up again. “I’m not giving you five bucks. And Max, Rachel Amber _is_ gorgeous, mysterious, and sparkly.”

“ _What_?” Kristen squawks, “Fernando, _no_. Team Chloe all the way.”

“Oh, please,” Fernando says. “Rachel—” 

“Childhood best friends! Plus, she’s got that sort of hot, scummy skater thing Max goes nuts for.”

“Okay, Chloe’s not _scummy,_ you guys, she’s just…misunderstood,” Max says, burying her face in her hands. 

“ _Like_ a certain werewolf,” Kristen interrupts, to groans from Max and outraged sputtering from Fernando.

“You seriously need to stop, you’re making it weird,” Max starts.

Suddenly the dorm room door is open, and Dana’s head is poking through it. “Who needs to stop what now?”

Max jumps and spins in her chair, even as a chorus of “hi” and “who’re you” and “Maxintroduceus” erupts from her laptop speakers. She isn’t sure why her grin feels guilty, but it does. “Hey, Dana,” she says. “I was just catching up with my pals from Seattle, and as it turns out they’re still _way_ too into Twilight.”

“Oh! Well, I’d be lying if I said Taylor Lautner wasn’t super cute,” Dana says. “Not to mention Kristen Stewart.”

“Yes!” Fernando agrees. “Max, she’s good, I like her.”

Dana waves as she steps inside, probably assuming it’s a video call. “Thanks! I like you too, Max’s friend!”

“Fernando,” Max clarifies. “And Kristen.”

“Yo!” says Kristen.

“Okay. Hey, Fernando and Kristen. I won’t interrupt for too long,” Dana says and perches on the end of Max’s bed. “I’m just heading out to that party, and I know Rachel asked earlier, but I wanted to double check if you wanted to come, Max.”

“Party?!” Kristen and Fernando shout in unison.

“Hold up, hold up, hot, lady surfer Edward Cullen invited you out and you stayed _in?_ ” Fernando demands. “With _us?_ Max, what are you _doing?”_

“Okay, yeah, no, I’m still Team Chloe but Max _come on_ ,” Kristen agrees. “Get out of here! You have to go!”

Dana fixes Max with a wide grin, looking lost but delighted at what she’s overhearing.

Max wants to die a little, kind of.

“Um, uh, good point guys. I’ll do that. Gotta go, bye,” Max says, yanking her laptop lid closed before she’s really thought about it and before her friends can even respond.

“So,” Dana says, looking at Max expectantly.

“A party!” Max says, forcing a wide grin onto her face. “Sounds like a great place to be. Very loud. Hardly any talking.”

“I don’t know, Max, I think parties are a great place to talk to people. Really get to know them,” Dana teases.

“You know, Dana, that seems like kind of a broad generalization,” Max continues, standing quickly and almost tripping over her own legs in the process. “Are you leaving like now-now?”

Dana glances at the phone in her hand for the time and then gives Max a quick once-over. “Now-ish. Plenty of time to get changed.”

A quick glance in the mirror aligns with Dana’s gentle suggestion. She looks like she’d been planning to spend an entire Saturday night in her dorm with just a few bad movies and her friends’ voices for company.

“Good idea.”

Dana seems to take Max’s agreement as an invitation, waltzing over to Max’s closet and rifling through it to select an outfit for her to wear. For her part, Max curls up on the couch, content to watch Dana work and occasionally provide input when prompted.

This should probably be more nerve-wracking than it is, Max thinks: one of the prettiest, most popular girls in school in her room like this, going through her closet. It’s not like it’s an entirely new sensation—Rachel is the prettiest and most popular of them all, and she’s dressed Max on more than one occasion. It’s just that all of those times, Max felt like a little kid again, squirming under the attention, thinking about how she wants to be more impressive than she is.

But being around Dana’s always easy, even if they’re not super close or anything. She’s nice, genuinely, and for some reason the little voice in the back of Max’s head that always pipes up to remind her that she’s being judged is quiet when Dana’s around.

Twenty minutes later, she’s following Dana and Juliet across the Blackwell campus to Dana’s car. She reaches for her phone to send Chloe a text, but her pockets are empty.

“Everything cool?” Dana asks, noticing Max’s sudden distraction.

“Yeah,” Max shrugs, and it’s sort of true. They’re already leaving later than they planned, just so Max could come. She’s not going to ask them to stay here in the parking lot while she heads back to her room just because she forgot her phone.

And at least this way she won’t have to deal with Fernando and Kristen blowing up her phone all night.

Max doesn’t think she’s ever known anyone who lives in the neighbourhood they end up in. Even in the darkness the big, sprawling lawns and meticulously trimmed hedges are impressive. The place drips money — so different from the version of Arcadia Bay that she knows. It’s distracting, a little. Dana wraps an arm around her waist and guides her up the path to the door just to get her off the sidewalk.

“Sorry,” Max says, a little embarrassed. They just got here and she’s already spacing out, acting like a dork.

“It’s fine,” Dana squeezes Max’s hip a little to reassure her. “These houses are _so_ huge, it’s obscene.” 

“Hayden’s family has _money._ Not Prescott money, but a good amount,” Juliet adds in. “You need to see the pool, they’ve got this crazy fountain in the center. I heard some girl got wasted and jumped into it from, like, a balcony last year.”

“Who _does_ that?” Max asks, before she can stop herself, only realizing how judgemental it sounds after it’s too late.

Dana just laughs, “Drunk people are idiots, Max. You’re smart, you know, not messing around with any of that stuff. It’s cool.”

Max keeps an eye out as Dana and Juliet lead her through the house, trying to catch a glimpse of Rachel or Chloe. It’s easier said than done, because the Jones house is absolutely crawling with kids. Max recognizes a bunch of them from school—Victoria, Courtney, and Taylor are sat on white leather sofa in the great room, rebuffing Zach Riggins’ attempts to impress them by shotgunning a beer—but there must be a significant amount of crashers because the place is _packed_.

Max tries not to be too obvious, but it’s not even half an hour before Dana calls her out. “Looking for someone, Max? Or someones?”

“I mean, Rachel did invite me,” Max says, not minding so much this time when she blushes. It’s only polite.

Dana’s eyebrows scrunch together just a little while she thinks. “Hmm. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen her yet tonight. Juliet, you?”

Juliet shakes her head, sipping her scotch. Max half thinks the dark liquor is part of her whole girl reporter thing. “I heard Zach saying he saw her going upstairs, but we all know how the boy spins a tale,” she says and completes the tableau.

“You can go look for her, Max, I’ll be here all night,” Dana says, winking.

It doesn’t sound forced, just genuine, so Max smiles. “I guess I’ll go do that then. Thanks for the ride, Dana. Nice to see you, Juliet.”

The two of them continue ripping into Zach behind her as she leaves, their voices quickly fading as Max heads for the stairs. There are a few kids sitting on the lower steps, but they don’t react at all as she approaches, not even to shift out of the way when she’s forced to step awkwardly between them. Max almost thinks they’re there deliberately, to keep her from reaching the second level, but no one actually tries to stop her.

The second story of the Jones house is quieter, though not by much. The landing is spacious, and practically empty, with a half dozen doors to choose from. One is already open, and Max peeks into it to find a large bonus room, with a small crowd of people gathered around a pool table in the center. They look older than her, for the most part. None of them are Chloe or Rachel, so Max continues on.

The next door she tries is a bathroom. Then an empty bedroom. Then a locked room.

She finds them on the fourth try, but not how she expected to.

It’s so dark that she doesn’t recognize the two figures leaned up against the wardrobe at first. But it’s immediately obvious what she’s interrupting when they spring apart, cursing. And that’s when she sees the blue hair, that familiar face, features drawn in panic.

“Sorry,” she blurts, feeling dazed, almost out of her body. “Fuck, I’m sorry, I—”

She doesn’t even realize she’s moving until she bangs her elbow hard on the doorjamb, a sharp, numbing pain shooting up her arm. She curses again, free hand curling around her body to rub away the ache when she hears it.

“Not _fucking_ now, Rachel.”

Max _knows_ she has to leave but for some reason her body just won’t move. She’s stuck, eyes fixed on the both of them. And, yeah, that’s Rachel — hair mussed, face slack, arms drawn back tight around her own stomach. That’s Chloe, scowling and cursing, fingers shaking as she struggles to fasten the button on her jeans.

“I am _so_ sorry,” Max says, shakily. “I-I should have, uh, knocked or, like—”

“Oh, hey, Max, come on in,” says Rachel. “Get the light, yeah? Chloe’s having some trouble, maybe that’ll help.”

“Max,” Chloe starts, but Max is already flicking the light switch, obeying on instinct.

She almost regrets it. The whole scene is so much sharper in the light: the raised, pink flesh at Rachel’s collarbone, the errant smudge of lipstick at the corner of her mouth, the red flush creeping up Chloe’s chest.

“Max, this isn’t,” Chloe’s jaw works wordlessly for a moment. “We weren’t doing anything.”

“I—”

“Oh, give it _up_ , Chloe,” Rachel scoffs. Her arms have fallen away from her stomach now, elbows poised against the wardrobe. Her gaze is locked on Max, even as she addresses Chloe and she looks to Max very much like a jungle cat about to strike. There’s something dangerous, feral in that unwavering stare. “We were about two seconds away from fucking, Max.”

“ _Rachel_ ,” Chloe barks, and Max has never heard her voice sound this sharp, this _frayed_.

“Don’t insult her intelligence by _lying_ , Chloe,” Rachel says. “Max is a big girl. She can handle it.”

“I’m sorry,” Max mumbles again, awkwardly, wanting to look away as Rachel stretches and runs a hand through her disheveled hair, but unable to make herself actually do it. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine,” Rachel says. “Look, Max, while you’re here …”

Chloe had been standing stock still, fists clenched, eyes locked on the floor, but something in the shift of Rachel’s tone has her neck snapping up, shoulders squared, jaw clenched so tight that the muscles of her neck stretch taut beneath her skin. “Rachel, shut up. Max, just…go the fuck downstairs, okay?”

“Now, now, don’t be so hasty. No need to rush, right Max? I mean, you’re here already, why don’t you just join us? The more the merrier.”

There’s no _air_ left in the room, so Max isn’t surprised when no one seems to hear the strangled “what?” that she chokes out in response.

“What the fuck are you trying to do?” Chloe demands, fixing Rachel with a look so poisonous that Max feels herself begin to sweat. 

Her pants are done up now, at least. That’s good.

“We all see the way you look at her, Chlo,” Rachel says, eyes flashing dangerously. “I’m just trying to get you what _you_ want, since you’re so afraid to fucking ask.”

“Well, isn’t that just like you.” Chloe looks more tense than Max can remember ever seeing her, fists clenched and shoulders drawn back tight.

Rachel pops a brow. “What, helping your dumb ass out because you’re too scared? Yeah, nothing new.”

Chloe’s laughter is cold, her sneer full of teeth, and suddenly the scene is flipped on its head: if Rachel isn’t quite prey, they’re both predators now. “No, losing interest. Sniffing out your next fuck right in front of me, no less.”

Finally Max averts her eyes. Nice carpet in here.

“I’m not the one so hip-deep in bicurious community college pussy that I can’t walk into a fucking Starbucks without bumping into some chick I’ve railed!” Rachel’s voice loses its even timbre for the first time, breaking when she raises it. “While you’re so busy trying to piss Joyce off, they’re using you to get back at daddy _and_ get a lib arts degree at the same time!”

The room is so silent that for a few long moments Max can hear bass thumping through the floor. Just downstairs Dana and Juliet are mingling, probably dancing, having fun. Victoria and her cronies are probably still making fun of whoever they think shouldn’t have been invited. It occurs to Max that she might rather be one of those kids right now.

“ _Fuck_ you, Rachel,” Chloe spits, grabbing her jacket off the bed and marching toward the door.

“Oh, _very_ original,” Rachel says, but Chloe doesn’t even react this time.

“Chloe, wait,” Max says, catching Chloe’s sleeve as she tries to brush past on the way to the door. She doesn’t expect Chloe to actually comply, pausing for just a moment in the doorway. It makes her realize that she doesn’t actually know what else to ask for. She doesn’t know _what to do_ ; she’s not even sure what just happened.

But she knows from the look in Chloe’s eyes what she needs to do. It’s panic and shame and a hurt so deep it makes Max ache in her chest. Chloe needs to go. Max lets her.

It’s a quiet exit, once Max releases her hold. Chloe doesn’t even bother slamming the door.

The silence is worse, somehow.

Worse because Chloe doesn’t look back, doesn’t see Rachel slump to the floor, doesn’t see the way her shoulders shake and her knees draw up to her chest. Max can’t help but wonder if it would make a difference.

It’s hard to look at. It feels invasive, impossibly rude to watch Rachel like this, to listen to her crying.

There’s this idea of Rachel that Max has always kind of held onto, since she first started showing up as a mysterious, beautiful figure on Chloe’s Instagram feed. The gorgeous girl from California that just really had her life together. Popular, smart, likeable.

All but flawless.

But after coming to Arcadia Bay, after actually meeting her, that idea of Rachel had expanded, taken on a new fullness. She knew Rachel as more than just an idea. She was a girl that took colour coded notes in class, that learned the names of all of the Blackwell staff, that covered her mouth with her hands if she laughed too loud. She smoked too much weed sometimes and she hated math and she snuck food into every first period class she had without ever getting caught.

And Max can’t help but feel ashamed now, because even after all this time she’d wanted Rachel to be something she wasn’t.

She’d fallen in love with the concept, with the idea of a girl who knew what she was doing, who was in control of her life at all times. A girl who could take Max under her wing, give her some of that strength, that certainty, that invincibility.

So it’s kind of unbearable, witnessing Rachel’s pain like this, knowing that she played a part. 

Knowing that somewhere else, Chloe’s off on her own, probably just as bad.

“Rachel,” Max surprises herself when she speaks, but it feels better than just _standing there._ “I…do you want me to go?”

God, it feels _so stupid_ to ask out loud. The minute the words leave her mouth it feels so obvious. In what world would Rachel want Max to _be here_ for this? Max showing up is the reason any of this is happening in the first place.

She’s so busy thinking about how stupid it is to even ask that she doesn’t notice Rachel sniffling, wiping at her face until she feels good enough to respond. Max does notice, however, Rachel’s voice when it comes through, tear-drenched and reedy. “Please stay, Max. I’d—it’d be good if you stayed.”

Max is sure she _looks_ stupid, too, just sort of gawking at Rachel in this bedroom lit for intimacy, the dimmed lamp on the bedside table. “Okay.”

Rachel chuckles, lets out an actual _laugh_ if a waterlogged one, and unfurls her arms. “Preferably next to me, Super Max.”

Max laughs too, because she can’t think of a damn thing to say, because the whole situation is really sort of ridiculous, because she feels like she’s floating on the ceiling and watching from above as she takes a few steps and sinks to her knees to sit next to Rachel, tucked between the wardrobe and the bed.

“Yeah, right, of course,” Max says. Rachel reaches out, grabbing Max’s thigh just over her knee and squeezing. “I don’t know why I thought — I mean, of course you wouldn’t want me over there. I’m not...I’m not always so good at this, I guess.”

“Well, clearly neither am I,” Rachel says. She must see the surprise on Max’s face because instantly she follows the remark with another short bark of laughter, which quickly devolves into an uncontrolled giggle fit.

It doesn’t sound right. Not after all the yelling and the crying, and par for the course, Max finds herself at a loss.

The burden of choice is taken away from her when the giggles wracking Rachel’s frame break and give way to great heaving sobs. It’s purely on instinct, at first, that Max wraps an arm around her, and when Rachel leans in Max rubs slow circles on her back.

“Rachel,” Max starts because she feels like she should say _something._ She should be doing _something_. But what can she say? What can she _do_ that won’t make things worse?

Rachel slides further down Max’s body, tears soaking through the front of Max’s t-shirt, shuddering hard with each fresh sob.

“Shhh,” Max murmurs, because it feels better than just silence. Tentatively she drags a hand through Rachel’s hair, smoothing it out against her back, and the sense memory it triggers is so powerful she almost loses her breath.

She’s been here before, with another girl, years and years ago. She didn’t know what to do then, with Chloe pouring out buckets of tears into her shoulder, shaking even worse than Rachel is now. It’s been five years since then, and Max had hoped that if someone needed her like that again she would be better at it somehow.

Then Rachel’s clambering away, scrambling to her knees and trying to stand but having too much trouble keeping her balance to make it on her own. Max bolts to her feet, catching Rachel by the elbow and hauling her to her feet.

“Max, I think,” Rachel cuts herself off, swaying dangerously. She brings a hand to her mouth and suddenly Max gets it. “I think I’m gonna be—”

“Okay,” Max says. She slips under Rachel’s shoulder, wrapping an arm around her waist and guiding her out the door. The bathroom, the bathroom, the bathroom…it was right over here—

They almost don’t make it in time. Rachel practically dives to the floor in front of the toilet as soon as Max gets the door open, slamming the lid up and ducking her head down to the bowl in one fluid motion. Max shuts and locks the door as quickly as she can, wondering if that particular skill was one of Rachel’s god given talents or if she’s just done this enough to be good at it.

Max holds Rachel’s hair as she heaves, reaching back with one hand to turn on the sink just for another noise to focus on. Hopefully the running water will muffle some of Rachel’s retching to the outside, too. The last thing either of them need right now is to deal with…well, anyone.

The ceiling in here’s kind of nice, a pretty shade of light blue. It really compliments the wallpaper. And that shower looks nice — spacious. She probably misses her bathroom back home more than any other part of the house; the facilities at Blackwell are pretty spartan.

“Max,” Rachel croaks, and it takes just a second too long between the sound reaching Max’s ears and her being able to process it. She rolls away from the toilet slightly, leaning back against the tub to her right, pressing her temple against the ceramic. “Max, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Max says absently, flipping the toilet lid shut and flushing. “Do you have a hair tie?”

Rachel shakes her head miserably and sniffs, a few fresh tears rolling down her cheeks.

“That’s okay, that’s okay, we’ll find one,” Max says, flipping open the cabinet above the sink and rifling through it. She finds a few spare hair ties still in a package next to some aftershave. A little small, Max decides, trying to stretch them out between her fingers, but better than nothing. She grabs a washcloth as well, and holds it under the stream of water from the faucet until it’s soaked through.

Rachel’s quiet as Max slides down next to her on the bathroom floor. There’s a pliancy to her, this total surrender as Max guides her head forward to tie her hair back in a ponytail that makes Max realize how drunk she really is.

“Alright, Rachel, can I help you clean up?” Max asks, gesturing toward Rachel’s face with the washcloth. Rachel nods, lazily rolling her face toward Max. Max drags the cloth gently under Rachel’s eyes, clearing off the streaked mascara as much as she can.

She can’t help the way her heart beats faster, carefully stroking her way down Rachel’s cheeks and around her mouth, trying to focus on the path of her fingers and not the way Rachel’s eyes on her face make her feel like it’s harder to breathe.

“Okay,” Max says, leaning back on her heels. “Do you think you can stand? Let’s get your mouth rinsed.”

Rachel’s a little wobbly still, but with Max’s help she makes it to the sink. It’s not super necessary to hold her hair any longer, now that it’s in a ponytail, but Max holds it in place against Rachel’s back with a palm between her shoulder blades anyway. It’s good to feel useful.

There’s a bottle of mouthwash under the sink, luckily. Rachel rinses twice and then allows Max to guide her to sit on the closed lid of the toilet.

“God, Max, your shirt,” Rachel says, and Max looks down to see the mascara stains as Rachel reaches out to try to smudge them away with her fingers. “I’m so sorry.”

“Uh, it’s fine, Rachel, don’t worry about it,” Max says, kind of helplessly as Rachel continues to paw at her shirt.

“No, no, it’s not. I totally fucked it up.” Rachel’s only making more of a mess, spreading the black pigment in thumb-sized streaks, and before Max can intervene her face is crumpling again. “I fucked it all up.”

“You didn’t,” Max has to catch herself, because there’s no way finishing that sentence won’t make things worse. She has to try a different approach. “It’s going to be okay.”

“I’m sorry,” Rachel manages through her tears. Max leans over, tearing off a strip of toilet paper and offering it to Rachel. She dabs her face and continues. “You’re being _so nice_ to me. You keep being so nice to me, even though I don’t deserve it.”

“Rachel,” Max tries to interrupt, but Rachel’s on a roll, not slowing down for anything.

“I was _really mean_. I shouldn’t have dragged you into this, you’re just…you’re just trying to be our friend and I shouldn’t have used you like some kind of trump card. You didn’t deserve it. I’m really sorry, Max.” 

“It’s okay,” Max says, at a loss.

“ _No_ ,” Rachel insists, tightening her grip on the front of Max’s shirt. “It’s not, Max.”

“I forgive you,” Max tries again, uncomfortable. It seems so heavy. The specifics of the fight had blurred to an almost comfortable haze in the chaos that followed, but here in the stark light of the bathroom, with Rachel’s eyes locked on hers so insistently it’s harder to pretend it doesn’t affect her. 

But Rachel seems satisfied with Max’s forgiveness, letting her hands fall back to her own lap, palms up like she’s waiting for something.

“We should probably get back,” Max offers tentatively, perched next to Rachel on the lip of the bathtub. She reaches into her pocket for her phone on reflex, just to check the time, and mentally curses herself when she comes up empty. She really should have gone back. How much of tonight could have been avoided with a simple text or phone call?

Rachel has calmed down some, she’s not crying anymore, but a look of panic flashes across her face at Max’s suggestion. “Max, I can’t—”

“We can’t stay here all night, Rachel,” Max cuts her off, as firmly as she can manage while still being gentle. She lets her palm fall across Rachel’s knee, almost startled by how quickly Rachel’s hands cover her own.

“Chloe was,” Rachel sniffs and Max tries not to visibly wince as more tears build up in her eyes. “She was my ride, we were gonna walk back. But I just…”

“Look, Dana brought me. She’s DD tonight, her and Juliet talked it over in the car. Here, do you have your phone? I’ll call her, she can take us back to Blackwell.”

Rachel nods, searching her pockets and then heaving a burdened sigh. “I brought it with me. It must have fallen out in the…Max, can you go get it for me?”

“Leave you here?” Max checks. 

Rachel tugs Max’s hand off of her knee and threads their fingers together, squeezing hard before letting her go. “Yeah.”

She goes, relieved when she exits the bathroom and sees the hallway empty. She couldn’t help but worry that there might be a line of people waiting. The last thing Rachel needs right now is an audience.

She feels so awkward, walking back into the bedroom, even though she’s alone. The entire argument — the _fight_ — she’d witnessed earlier still seems to linger in the air, a heaviness that weighs her steps down on the carpet.

She tries to focus on finding Rachel’s phone quickly, not on replaying the things Rachel and Chloe had said to each other. Not on the hot, leaden weight that had sunk down into her stomach when she’d realized what Rachel and Chloe had been doing, not on the dizzying bewilderment she’d felt at Rachel’s proposition, and definitely not on the way that heat in her belly began to spread at the thought.

The phone ends up being stuck under the wardrobe. Max has to slide her hand into the darkness to pull it out. She steps on a belt when she’s getting up, dimly recognizes it as one of Chloe’s and grabs it off the floor on impulse, rolls it up and stuffs it in her pocket after thinking for a second.

She can’t imagine how awkward it would be trying to give this back to her, but maybe she can find a way to sneak it into Chloe’s room or something.

Rachel unlocks the phone without preamble and hands it back to Max.

Max spends perhaps a moment too long staring down at Rachel’s phone background, one of Max’s shots from the beach party, before navigating to messages.

Nothing new.

She had kind of been hoping that there would be _something_ from Chloe. Some sign that there was a light at the end of this tunnel, that things between them weren’t really this bleak.

No such luck, though.

She texts Dana, clarifying her identity and asking for a quick egress. She’s light on the details, but Dana still texts back almost immediately. She’s knocking quietly at the door within minutes, Juliet in tow. They don’t ask questions, though Max knows Juliet must be dying to, as they help Max guide a drunken Rachel down the stairs and outside to the car.

The ride back to Blackwell feels so much longer than the drive over. Rachel tries to unbuckle her seatbelt, to slide over closer to Max, but she stops at Max’s quiet urging, settling for Max’s hand on her thigh until they reach the Blackwell parking lot.

“Thank you so much,” Max says lowly, leaning half into the hall from Rachel’s room to accept the phone Juliet and Dana had retrieved from her dorm at Max’s request. Rachel’s still in her party clothes, slumped over on her bed. “I’m sorry that we had to make you leave early. I don’t know what we would have done without you.”

“Don’t sweat it, Max,” Dana says. “Just make sure she’s alright, yeah? Let us know if you need anything.”

“I think we’re all set. Have a good night, Dana.”

Dana bids her goodnight and saunters back down the hall; Max has all of three seconds to think about how she should make an effort to hang out with her before the door’s shut and Rachel’s fussing from the bed, ever in search of human contact.

Max had always known her to be touchy-feely, but drunk Rachel was in a league of her own.

Maybe less drunk Rachel and more sad Rachel, Max thinks when she checks her own phone to find her inbox empty of Chloe.

“Max,” Rachel calls, flexing one palm in a lazy grabbing motion. “C’mere.”

Pocketing her phone, Max sits on the edge of the bed, and despite everything finds she’s a little nervous. Some part of her still can’t reconcile the night’s events with the fact that she’s in _Rachel Amber’s dorm_ , surrounded by incense and dreamcatchers, the air thick with the scent of florals and something deeper, warmer. It still feels a little bit like a mystery to be solved.

Then there are arms around her midsection, pulling her in.

The girl, the myth, the legend.

Rachel huffs, half into the covers, “Closer, though. No more vomit, promise.”

Max turns inward as directed, and is mentally filing through ways to talk about the party without making things worse when she’s interrupted again, this time by Rachel gasping.

“Your shirt’s all black! I still can’t believe I ruined your outfit.” She sounds like she forgot. “ _And_ your night.”

Looking down, Max can just see in the half-light from the window that, yeah, the streaks of mascara all down the front of her shirt are pretty colossal. She can also see that Rachel’s working herself up again, so she moves quickly to shush her.

“Rachel. Rachel, hey. It’s no big deal, okay? I’ve had way, way worse nights. I don’t even really like parties, and I hated this shirt. I think my mom gave it to me for Christmas or something, don’t even sweat it,” Max says. She’s not even sure of that much, speaking to origin stories, but it seems to be having the soothing effect she was going for, so she sticks with it.

“Really?” Rachel’s eyes are big and still watery when she looks up. “I swear I’ll pay for it, you don’t have to brush it off just because I’m being a huge fucking baby or—“

Max shakes her head. “You’re not being a baby. I don’t...I’m not really clear on everything that went down, okay, but you’re not a baby for feeling...however you’re feeling. And there’s nothing wrong with babies! They just, uh, feel a lot, but they’re really cute, and…”

“And sometimes they puke on you?” Rachel supplies. For once when she laughs at herself, just a little, it seems genuine.

“There you go. You hit the toilet so you’ve got that over babies everywhere. Sometimes they do puke on you,” Max agrees. “And if they happen to stain a shirt that you don’t even like, so much the better.”

Something shifts in Rachel’s eyes, but before Max can place it Rachel is retracting her arms, sitting up a little in bed, moving on to the next thing. “Well, I’m glad you think I’m more mature than a baby, Max. And there’s no use sleeping in that shirt, then. Don’t wanna ruin things we actually like, yeah?”

Instantly Max is blushing. “Right, yeah. I’ve got PJs in my room, I’ll—I’ll go change and then come back? If you’re still wanting a sleepover, I mean.”

“Don’t be silly,” Rachel says, and the implication feels harsh before she continues, “just grab something from my dresser. I’ve told you before I don’t mind if you wear my clothes.”

It’s nicer, but it certainly isn’t any more relaxing. A million inappropriate images come unbidden to Max’s mind, and she stands just for something to do. “Uh. Right. Just a t-shirt, or?”

“There are some shorts in there too.”

Rachel sounds completely unbothered by the situation; Max keeps her back turned, trying not to envision Rachel watching her, cataloguing her flaws. It’s not in Rachel’s nature, she knows, but it doesn’t stop her skin from flushing hot when she thinks about it.

In the end she finds a plain black shirt, way too big for her as usual, and a pair of crimson athletic shorts reading ‘BLACKWELL’ across the ass. It’s not what Max would’ve picked on her own, but given that most of her other options were tiny volleyball shorts—she has to try not to envision _that_ , too—she figures they’ll do for the night.

She pauses with her back still toward Rachel and grabs her phone out of the pocket of her pants. Still nothing new from Chloe. She types out a new message, ignoring the knot in her stomach when she hits the send button.

**Hey. Got Rachel back to Blackwell safe. Please let me know you’re okay too. xoxo Max**

When she turns around, Rachel’s lying under the blankets, rolling her head to the side to take a look.

“Way cute, Max,” Rachel says. “Maybe you should’ve tried out for basketball or track or something.”

“Too clumsy.” True to form, it’s a struggle for Max not to choke her own tongue as she says it, and she’s not a little mad at herself for it: she’s here to _comfort_ Rachel, not to fish for compliments.

Rachel just smiles. “Yeah, organized sports aren’t really my thing either. Not anymore. But I steal their shit sometimes ‘cause it’s comfy. Get in here,” she says, and lifts the edge of the blanket. She seems to be sobering up a little, but while her words are getting clearer, her voice is still dulled, not as bright and enthusiastic as usual.

It makes Max feel even more guilty when she slides under the covers and Rachel curls into her side and her brain short circuits.

“I was getting hot,” Rachel says.

Max supposes it’s by way of explanation because Rachel isn’t wearing jeans anymore. Just a tank top and boyshorts from what Max can tell, and she can tell quite a lot given how their legs are now twined together, just heat and so much smooth skin.

She’s cuddled with her friends before, of course. She just neglected to remember how comfortable Rachel got and how quickly.

She just can’t get the scene from the party out of her mind.

_Look, Max, while you’re here…_

Max clears her throat. “Wouldn’t want you to be too hot,” she says, trying to force those thoughts away. It isn’t the time. More than likely it’ll never be the time. More than likely it was all just a cruel joke, designed to hurt Chloe and catching Max in the crossfire only by happenstance.

“You’re just the right temperature,” Rachel announces with her head on Max’s shoulder. “You make an excellent teddy bear, Super Max.”

Max swallows. “Thank you. Do you want to, uh, talk, or…?”

She feels Rachel shaking her head before she sees it. “No. Just hold me.”

And for all she doesn’t know, maybe it’s good that that’s exactly what Max does.

x.x.x

When a fucking Escalade rolls up on her, Chloe assumes it’s one of the assholes from the Vortex Club come to mess with her. She _thought_ it was a little strange that nobody tried to stop her on her way out of the party.

But then she realizes she’s a good mile away already, and roaming around to find her wouldn’t be realistic, so she has no idea who’s driving.

“Fuck off,” she says when the passenger side window goes down, hunching further into her jacket, trying to sound as pissed off as possible.

It isn’t hard. She’s really pissed off.

“Chloe! Hey, it’s me, stop.” There’s someone leaning over the console, trying to get her attention, and it takes Chloe a while to parse just who “me” is.

Oversized black-rimmed glasses. Bathroom-sink highlights. Flash of metal in the nose.

For a while longer, she feels like she should just keep walking, like the force of the storm brewing in her chest could keep her going without talking to anyone else all night long.

But it’s December. It’s December and her jacket isn’t particularly good at keeping the wind out and if she walks around with tears on her face for too long they might _actually_ freeze that way, so. Septum ring.

“Nicole,” Chloe says, turning on her heel, big fake smile. “Long time no see.”

Nicole falters for a second, looking sheepish. “Yeah, I’ve been pretty busy. School, you know, semester’s almost over.”

It hurts that she thinks Chloe needs to hear an excuse. As if there was ever any ambiguity about what they were to each other.

“Kind of surprised to see you out here, though,” Nicole continues. “Little far from home. You need a ride?”

Chloe wonders if Nicole can see how red and puffy her eyes are or the tension in her smile as she fights to keep her expression from sliding into a naked grimace. There’s no light out here but the streetlights, but they’re brighter in this neighbourhood than they’ve ever been back home.

“You live around here?” Chloe asks, shuffling in place, not answering Nicole’s question yet.

“No, I’m in one of those apartments down on Oceanside, remember?” Nicole says. Chloe doesn’t, really, but she nods along anyway, just to keep it simple. 

She’s pretty sure they never actually went back to Nicole’s place to hook up. The bathroom in the Humanities building, in Chloe’s truck behind the Dairy Queen that one night, Professor Wharton's office after hours when Chloe dropped in on Nicole grading papers, sure. Nicole had always liked it best in some place they might get caught. Some girls were like that, thrill seekers, they liked getting off on the risk of it all. Chloe personally didn’t get anything extra out of fooling around in public spaces like that, but that never stopped her from accommodating all the same. 

“Just visiting the folks,” Nicole continues when Chloe fails to comment. “I was actually on my way back home when I spotted you. I almost wasn’t sure it was you. Kinda worried I was about to accidentally harass some other blue-haired girl.”

“Not many of us in the Bay.”

“Yeah. So, about that ride?”

In the end, Chloe agrees. It’s just easier this way. 

“Nice wheels,” Chloe says, eyeing all the lit-up buttons and switches on the dashboard. The stereo alone probably costs three times what her truck is worth. She forgoes her seatbelt so she can lean up against the door, legs stretched out as much as she can. It’s what her high school guidance counselor had once deemed “defensive body language.”

Nicole’s gaze keeps darting to Chloe out of the corner of her eye, no doubt nervous about the ticket she’d get if a cop found them like this. She doesn’t bother asking, doesn’t even try to tell Chloe what to do, which makes her feel better in a petty way. She likes the advantage she has, being able to look at Nicole dead-on this way, while Nicole is forced to keep her eyes on the road most of the time.

She probably shouldn’t be going out of her way to antagonize Nicole like this, not when she was just trying to be decent.

But the embers burning low in Chloe’s belly have kicked back up again. There’s a fire roaring in her now. All that heat needs somewhere to go, or else she’ll just burn up in it.

“Oh, yeah, it’s my mom’s, actually,” Nicole says, shrugging uncomfortably. “My Prius is in the shop. Y’know, needed a bit of work done.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Chloe says, not even trying to keep the boredom out of her voice. “That’s cool.”

“Is it?” Nicole laughs, awkwardly. “I kind of hate this thing. It’s so… _gaudy._ It’s terrible for the environment. I keep trying to get them to switch to something more green, but you know how parents are. They just don’t want to hear it, they’d rather show off for their rich friends than think about their responsibility to the earth.”

Chloe hums neutrally, exhausted by the pretense, suddenly. It’s such bullshit, this rich college girl talking to her about her parents’ environmental responsibility when Chloe’s mom has been driving the same shitty station wagon for eleven years because she hasn’t been able to qualify for another loan with everything they owe on the house.

“So, where do you live?” Nicole asks, fingers tapping an anxious pattern against her steering wheel. “I don’t think we’ve ever been back to your place.”

“I don’t tend to take girls back home with me.” And she might as well go for broke, because why not? “My stepdad doesn’t approve. Cedar Avenue, by the way. Make a left at the gas station on Barlow.”

“Oh,” Nicole says, and squirms uncomfortably. “He’s like that, huh?”

“Mmm, ex-army. Total fascist. Likes his guns, likes his big fucking stupid muscle car, likes his fucking Officer Friendly mustache, likes his fucking dinner on the table at five p.m. sharp every night, woman,” Chloe says, slipping into a gruff imitation of David’s voice without thinking. Nicole’s biting her lip now, glancing at Chloe out of the corner of her eye with something like pity.

Chloe thinks about going on, about giving Nicole more material to take back to her Queer Student Union friends, the sad tale of the dirt poor lesbian with the fucked up stepdad. There was that time when she was sixteen and she’d come home to find all the posters with girls on them torn down from her room, the copy of Playboy she’d stolen from Justin’s brother room missing from her closet.

That time she’d gotten lectured and grounded after getting suspended from school for fighting. An older student, some senior, had called her a dyke in the halls, knocked her to the floor. Chloe had been the one to get in trouble, bloodying the girl’s nose. It had been David who’d broken them up, David who’d watched from the other end of the hall as the harassment started, as it escalated. David who drove her home and yelled at her in front of her mother for fighting. 

There was always the simpler stuff, too. The classics. The greatest hits. David’s naked suspicion whenever she and Rachel were together. The room raids. The lectures about how losers drop out of high school and people who want to develop some goddamn discipline join the army. The grandstanding about steering ships with a firmer hand and, later, introducing his firm hand to her face.

But, no.

No, it would be pointless, wouldn’t it?

“Haven’t seen you around campus lately,” Nicole says, eagerly and Chloe allows it. Lets her steer the topic back to something less loaded. Obviously she doesn’t want to be the one to receive Chloe’s confessions tonight.

“I’ve been trying to pick up extra shifts at work,” Chloe says, which is the truth. “Just less time to sit in.”

“That’s too bad,” Nicole says and it sounds enough like she actually means it to stay Chloe’s tongue. “But, I’m sure the extra money is nice.”

There’s no “extra” money living paycheck to paycheck, but Chloe’s not about to try explaining. It’s the exact same cluelessness she’d been inundated with as a scholarship student at Blackwell. She’s got even less patience for it now than she had then.

It makes her miss Rachel’s tact, a feeling that quickly melts into bitterness. She doesn’t want to miss anything about Rachel.

“Here, right?” Nicole asks, turning onto Chloe’s street. “Which house?”

“Forty-four. It’s right…yeah, right here,” Chloe says around the sudden lump in her throat.

Nicole pulls up to the curb and waits, engine idling, eyeing the house with an intensity that leaves Chloe both embarrassed and angry. What must she think of the fucked up lawn, the half-painted facade, the oil stains on the driveway?

The picture it must paint, with the details Chloe’s already let slip about the mean stepfather, the extra shifts at her minimum wage job that keep her from stealing the education Nicole’s parents so effortlessly pay for.

There’s this slight part to her lips, gaze locked over Chloe’s shoulder, just drinking in the scene.

Is she turned on? Is it sexier knowing that Chloe’s life is a disaster? Would she just cream her fucking jeans if she knew the rest of it? The fights with her stressed out mother, the dead dad, the best friend that fucks her without a care in the world?

Chloe grits her teeth, shifting in her seat to share Nicole’s view.

The lights are on downstairs. Both cars in the driveway.

David will be in the living room right now, probably a few beers down. Maybe her mom will be curled into his side, watching whatever fucking hunting show or war movie or other macho bullshit that he can't get enough of.

They don’t even have the same taste in TV. They don’t have the same taste in anything. But her mom never asks to change the channel. She doesn’t even get to leave the room, to go watch something upstairs, because then David complains that she doesn’t want to spend time with him.

Maybe the beers will have settled him down. Maybe her mom’s presence will be enough to keep him cool, and when she goes inside it will be easy to get through the dog and pony show. Hello mom, hello David. Nice night we’re having. No, I already ate dinner. Thank you for offering. I’m tired, I’m going to get some sleep, I’ll see you both tomorrow.

But maybe not.

Maybe he’s had a bad day. Maybe some high school kid mouthed off to him again, some untouchable Prescott type, and he’s had to confront the fact that the little plastic sheriff's badge he carries around doesn’t give him any real authority. Maybe he’ll treat her like an enemy combatant, like a suspect, like the delinquent he’s so convinced she is and he’ll get in close, smell the alcohol on her breath, really go off.

Maybe her mom will notice she’s been crying, will ask the wrong question in front of him, will set him off on a lecture. Maybe she’ll snap and tell him what she thinks of his pathetic authoritarian complex and maybe he’ll remind her what a piece of shit she is, what a disappointment to her mother, what a failure to the whole family. Maybe mom will try, half-heartedly, to get him to settle down, but give up in the end, like she always does, because she can’t _help at all_ when Chloe refuses to stop provoking him.

Maybe.

“Chloe?” The sudden hand on her thigh makes her jump and she’s immediately embarrassed, shutting the slightly parted car door just to restore darkness to the cab, so Nicole can’t see her flush. “You okay?”

“Do you have any roommates?” Chloe asks, grateful when her voice comes out flat. Nonchalant.

“Um, no. Why?”

“What about plans, tonight? Are you going anywhere?”

“I don’t know, I was probably just going to end up staying in. Y’know, study or something. Why, what’s up?”

Chloe nods, licks her lips. “It’s just,” she glances to the clock on the center console, glowing radioactive green in the darkness, “Eleven thirty on a Saturday night is _way_ too early to turn in, you know? I was at a party earlier.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, it sucked,” Chloe says, pushing a shaky laugh out through her teeth. “Total bust. But the night’s still young. Isn’t it?”

She knows exactly the look to give Nicole, making sure to incline her head visibly, so that even in the low light there’s no room for Nicole to misread Chloe’s meaning.

Chloe hears her breathe in, feels the way the pressure of her hand on Chloe’s knee changes as the mood between them shifts.

Nicole fucks like a rich girl. She always has, Chloe realizes, it’s just that before she didn’t think on it enough to really articulate the thought. Tonight’s been illuminating, seeing the car, hearing about her family, that apartment in the nice, beachfront part of town that a barista’s wage is absolutely not paying for.

She fucks like Chloe owes it to her. Like she’s swiping daddy’s credit card, like she’s signing a check. It’s how she wants to, it’s when she wants to, it’s where she wants to. A few times, she’s been generous, getting Chloe off too before she sends her on her way. A handful of change for the tip jar. Thanks, that was fun, I’ll call you tomorrow.

There’s never a call, but Chloe’s got this feeling like she’s not going to be taking any calls tomorrow anyway. Not if she goes through with this. The lie’s just fine with her.

Chloe stretches out, reaching up and behind her head far enough that she knows there’ll be some skin on display beneath the hem of her shirt, and then slumps down further in her seat, legs falling wider than before. “Maybe you could show me your apartment. Down on Oceanside.”

Nicole bites her lip—she always does when she’s nervous—but this time she’s smiling around her teeth, just a little. “Yeah. Yeah, I could do that.”

“Then do it,” Chloe says, voice purposely husky. It’s the only way she knows how to keep the hurt down in her stomach where it belongs.

Nicole pulls out into the road again. At first Chloe commits to leaning her head against the window, but the more familiar houses they pass, the more déjà vu washes over her in waves of nausea. She remembers so many nights like this, driving by in her own truck, Rachel slumped down on the passenger side like she is now.

How Rachel was probably using her all those times, just like she’s about to use Nicole now.

 _Can’t walk into a fucking Starbucks_.

Can’t walk home, either, Chloe thinks, and starts messing around with the radio so she doesn’t _have_ to think anymore, flipping through a punk song, something with a hip-hop beat, landing on country. Some fucking bluegrass band that takes her back to a place that stings, but not the place that stings the most right now.

Nicole has to comment, of course. “Huh. Wouldn’t have pegged you for a country girl.”

“You’d be right. I hate this shit,” Chloe says, doesn’t even try to play it off, and turns the radio off entirely.

For a while all she can hear is their breathing, the engine coming muffled through the insulated cabin, too smooth a ride for her to focus on what could use fixing like she does when she’s driving the truck. Then her phone vibrates, so she fishes it out of her jacket pocket and of course it’s a text from Max.

“What’s that?” Nicole asks, always so fucking chatty, none of it a bit genuine.

“Nothing.” Chloe puts her phone away again without actually reading the message, leans over to squeeze Nicole’s knee in turn. “Drive faster.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we love, love, love to read your feedback so please, please, please comment--the more you have to say to us the better!
> 
> our tumblrs are [holdsteady](http://holdsteady.tumblr.com/) and [explosionshark](http://explosionshark.tumblr.com/)


	5. Divide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're back with more angst! all apologies for the extended wait, but if not every week, updates should be coming, y'know, sooner than four months apart from here. thanks so much for sticking with us!
> 
> chapter title from "divide" by tigers jaw. further recommended listening: "wet grass or cold cement" by oso oso.

Rachel’s never been run over with a truck, but she’s pretty sure she knows what it feels like.

A car? Sure, everybody’s made the connection between a hangover and a little road rash. Maybe even a pickup. But now there’s an eighteen-wheeler rolling through her head, and her bed is empty, and there’s too much fucking light.

“Shit,” she groans, burying her face in her pillow. Her voice comes out jagged, rough, like she’d spent last night gargling handfuls of gravel. It’s small and stupid but it makes her feel even more pathetic.

That’s the one upside to Max up and leaving, she supposes—there’s no one around to judge her as she fights the sudden wave of dizziness and subsequent nausea that leaves her a writhing, moaning mass on the bed.

It’s distinctly the only upside to Max leaving.

 _Fuck_ , she’s really made a mess of things.

The scene at the party was bad enough, airing all of her dirty laundry with Chloe in front of Max like that, but in the cold light of morning, what came after almost seems worse.

What kind of psycho humiliates a girl’s longstanding crush in front of her and then demands to be taken care of? Comforted? To be held, as though she were an innocent party?

No wonder Max bailed as soon as she got the chance.

She should get out of bed. She should go close her blinds, at least. Get something to drink. Take an aspirin. _Take a shower_. Brush her teeth.

But there’s an invisible railroad spike through her skull and she can feel her heartbeat in her temples and her whole body feels leaden.

And it’s not like lying here is going to make anything worse than it already is.

The easiest way to drown it all out is to drag her pillow out from under her and bring it down over her head, shielding herself from the sun and her responsibilities and as many of her own thoughts as possible.

It’s satisfactory, for a minute. For a few minutes.

She isn’t sure how much time passes, actually, just that eventually, the door swings open, and the world is running in real time again. Whether she likes it or not.

Rachel shifts as subtly as she can under her pillow, peeking out through the gap she finds without giving herself away.

The first thing she sees is a grey hoodie, then a white paper bag, and finally, pale skin dusted with freckles.

It takes a moment for Rachel’s sluggish brain to put all the images together in a coherent way. And a moment after that for her to realize what it means, to rewrite her perception of the morning.

Max didn’t just cut and run, because no one who does that ever comes back with breakfast.

No one who does that ever ends up looking this lost and awkward and cute, shuffling in place, casting nervous glances toward Rachel on the bed.

As nice as it is to observe Max like this, unguarded and unaware, Rachel figures she should probably do her a solid. Make this easier. She owes her that much.

That much and _way_ more.

“Max?” Rachel asks, in her sleepiest voice, embarrassed when she sounds just as hoarse as before. She clears her throat, rolling onto her side and pushing her hair out of her face.

God, she probably looks like such a wreck.

Maybe she should have kept playing possum.

“Morning, Rachel,” Max says, a tad too loud. Rachel winces and Max ducks her head apologetically, lowering her voice when she continues. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. I was just gonna leave you a few things.”

“Things?” Rachel asks, kicking off the blankets around her legs.

And she’s pantsless.

Okay.

Max nods forcefully, eyes locked resolutely on Rachel’s face. “Yeah, I got breakfast.”

“Oh, thanks.” Rachel hopes her smile is sincere, because her gratitude is, it’s just that the churning in her stomach doesn’t leave much room for appetite.

“And some aspirin,” Max continues, shuffling forward and setting a bottle of pills down on Rachel’s nightstand. “And some water.”

“Part of a balanced breakfast,” Rachel tries, but the joke falls a little flat what with her wrecked voice.

She supposes making use of some of the provisions Max has brought her might help, so she grabs the bottle of aspirin, twists the cap.

It doesn’t open.

Rachel hopes that Max’s sweetness isn’t just for show, because this is truly fucking pathetic. “It appears, uh, being hungover turns me into a literal child. This cap is totally Rachel-proof. Help me out?”

“Aw, don’t worry, these things are always tough,” Max says, and Rachel appreciates the lie, appreciates how gently Max takes the bottle from her.

She _really_ appreciates the two pills that Max drops into her still-open palm and the water bottle that follows, cap already off.

The next time Rachel speaks, some of the friction has gone from the back of her throat, and her voice is already a little clearer. She really has to remember to drink water when she’s partying, fight or no fight.

“Thank you, Max,” she says, and then wiggles her eyebrows a little, trying to regain some of her dignity when she jokingly adds, “Actually, before I thank you, what did you bring me to eat?”

“Well, you seemed to enjoy the zucchini bread, so I thought I’d try you on the banana bread,” Max says, looking a little bashful. “Sweets to the sweet.”

“Sweets to the sweet, huh? I should be the one giving _you_ baked goods and candy, then.”

Max’s eyes widen, almost imperceptibly, and Rachel can sense that she’s about to start fumbling for some kind of line in return, so she swoops in before the momentum is lost.

“Good choice, though, but maybe for later when my stomach isn’t actively in rebellion,” she continues.

“I also brought some bagels.” Max looks down, opening the bag to inspect its contents. “We’ve got plain, cinnamon raisin, poppy seed, and everything.”

“Super Max after all. Plain, please. To appease the insurgents.”

“Insurgents?”

“In my stomach,” Rachel explains. “Staging the rebellion.”

Max breathes out a chuckle, seeming more embarrassed by the fact that she didn’t follow the joke than anything, which is incredibly endearing because it was an incredibly stupid joke. “Oh, of course. Let them eat bagels.”

Rachel doesn’t actually trust herself to be able to keep the whole bagel down yet, but it’s nice to have something normal to do. She accepts the bagel Max offers her gratefully, nibbling on it between sips of water, glad for the company when Max sits down at the foot of the bed and joins her.

“This is really good,” Rachel says, which isn’t a lie but _is_ an embellishment. The silence was beginning to feel too heavy, like all of her guilt over the last twenty-four hours was spilling out of her while she ate—and flooding the room. “Thanks, Max.”

“No problem, Rachel,” Max says, smiling so _earnestly_ at the praise that something snaps in Rachel’s chest.

“I thought you bailed,” she says, before she can really stop herself. Max blinks, apparently startled and Rachel hurries on, trying to get the words in before Max can finish chewing. “When I woke up, I mean. When you weren’t here. Not that I would blame you or anything, you’ve already done a lot for me when you really didn’t have to.”

“I didn’t mean to freak you out,” Max hurries to assure her, looking so immediately apologetic that Rachel reaches out, taking Max’s hand and squeezing before she can stop herself. “I just…I mean, I’ve never been drunk but I’ve seen a couple friends through hangovers and I figured you might appreciate someone looking out for you a little.”

“I…” Rachel realizes she’s started talking before she’s even figured out exactly what she wants to say. There’s this pressure behind her eyes, something that makes her smile weaker in the middle, and she kind of just wants to lie back down — to curl onto her side and tug Max down with her, back underneath the blankets, away from the rest of the world for just a few hours more. It’s startling, actually, how bad she wants this once the thought coalesces. It makes her feel weak, a little foolish, but Max’s eyes on her face are so gentle, her hand in Rachel’s so soft that it almost doesn’t matter.

But she can’t do that. It’s still morning, but only barely, and it may be Sunday but there’s work to be done. She’s never gained anything from hiding away from the world, no matter how badly she’s wanted to.

“I guess I’m pretty lucky I’ve got you to look out for me a lot, then,” Rachel says, light like it’s a joke, but she hopes Max knows anyway how much she means it.

Max smiles, soft, but it goes all the way to her eyes. She doesn’t say anything, but she squeezes Rachel’s hand back and that’s enough.

“Thanks again for the breakfast, Max,” Rachel says at last, gently pulling away. “I’ll probably give that banana bread a shot after I shower. Can’t just wallow in my room forever. That’s the trick with these hangovers, you know? You’ve got to show them who’s boss.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Though I think Chloe would disagree,” Max says and then winces.

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Rachel says smoothly, for both of their sakes. It hurts just to hear Chloe’s name, and more to start thinking about how exactly she got this hangover, and fuck, she’s trying _not_ to wallow.

Besides, it feels like the opportunity to apologize in earnest has passed.

“Sorry, sorry,” Max says, burying her face in her hands on the bed and heaving a sigh. Rachel reigns in the impulse to touch Max this time, fingers flexing in the bedsheets. “I didn’t mean to… y’know…”

“Yeah,” Rachel says, swallowing hard. “Look, Max, it’s fine. It’s not like we can just avoid talking about it forever.”

“Well, maybe not forever, but it’s not like you need me making this morning any harder on you.”

“You haven’t,” Rachel says, a little more forcefully than she means to, judging by how quickly Max looks up at her. She softens her voice when she continues, “You really haven’t.”

“I don’t, uh, really fully understand everything that happened last night. Between you guys,” Max says, nervously picking at a frayed string at the hem of her shirt. “And I don’t have to. I mean, that’s your business. But you’re both my friends and I…I mean, I know you’re really important to Chloe. And she’ll forgive you for whatever, if you can forgive her too. Which I hope you can because you guys together are really…you’re really amazing. And it would be a shame to lose that.”

It’s easy, hugging Max. Getting easier. Rachel remembers the first time she did, forgoing Max’s offered introductory handshake in favour of something more intimate — partially because it’s just more her style, partially to see what Max would do, if she’d accept or reject Rachel’s affection. Max hadn’t really done either. She just stood there, stiff, and allowed Rachel’s embrace, contributing a tepid pat on the back as they parted and nothing else.

It was something that Rachel did _to_ Max back then. It feels nice that it’s becoming something they do together now, how Max relaxes a little into the embrace and wraps her arms around Rachel’s back, content to stay for as long as Rachel needs her.

Nice and maybe a little scary, how quickly it’s becoming a comfort to Rachel, baked goods in the morning and cuddles and the faint scent of coconut wafting from Max’s hair.

By the time they draw apart again, Rachel’s able to hold herself together, her smile strengthened again. “Thank you, Max. Really. I think I might go and try my luck with that whole forgiveness thing this morning.”

“Maybe stop by and pick up some more of that banana bread. Sweet talk and sweet treats will get you pretty far with Chloe.”

“Must be why she’s so fond of you. You’re the sweetest person I know,” Rachel says, glad that Max seems to take only the compliment and not the dejection underneath.

Max stands, blushing, and Rachel stands with her in automatic response.

It’s not necessary to walk her the five steps from her bed to the door, but Rachel does anyway, feeling unexpectedly needy, letting her palm hover at the small of Max’s back all the way. She pulls her in for another impulsive hug in the doorway, pausing for a moment with her chin tucked over Max’s shoulder. The _simplicity_ of Max’s affection is intoxicating, and Rachel can’t help but crave more; especially now, when things with Chloe seem to be getting more complicated by the minute.

Rachel allows herself a few moments to breathe deep, leaned out into the hallway watching Max walk away. She forces herself back inside the room, shutting the door before Max can turn back and catch her staring, before she gets too lost in the indulgence to make herself do what she has to do next.

She checks her texts again. Nothing from Chloe, so she types out a short, conciliatory message before tossing her phone back on the bed. Sound on, just in case.

She doesn’t want to miss more than she has to getting ready to face the day.

X.x.x

Chloe’s truck isn’t in the driveway when Rachel pulls up to the Price house. Rachel checks her phone again, finds her messages still unanswered and puts the car in park.

So Chloe wants to throw her weight around a little, make Rachel sweat.

Rachel can deal with that. She’s seen herself through a few of Chloe’s tantrums before, she knows the drill. Chloe wants a chase, she wants the attention, she wants to be pushed and needled and nudged until there’s nothing left to do but patch things up. It’s easier, for Chloe, to stop fronting after Rachel’s typical onslaught. She won’t give in a moment before she’s ready, and she won’t be ready until they’ve done the whole damn ritual, as exhausting as it can be.

At least this time around Rachel has supplies: the banana bread Max had suggested and, tucked into the paper bag from the bakery so as to mask the smell, a blunt packed with love from California.

Hopefully the pit stop at Justin’s house, the leering from his older brother, would be worth it.

Bag in hand, Rachel rings the doorbell, and when that doesn’t garner a response within a few moments, she raps on the door in a rhythmic pattern, supposing that if she’s going to have to deal with parents, she’ll go for breezy as usual.

David answers the door, already scowling. “Chloe isn’t here,” he says, and takes the breeze right out of her sails.

“Oh, hi, David. That’s too bad.” Rachel offers a saccharine smile, rocks back on her feet, showing him just how unruffled she is. “May I come inside and wait for her?”

His mustache twitches. “It’s a bad day for that. Patching a wall upstairs. You have your Chloe to thank for that, her and her damn skateboards.”

“She does have a mean pop shuv-it,” Rachel concedes, eyebrows knitting together in confusion. What the fuck did skateboarding have to do with drywall? “But I could just hang out downstairs. I won’t be any trouble. Maybe I could put some coffee on or make some sandwiches.”

“Not today. If you want coffee and sandwiches, there’s a cafe a few blocks west. If you want Chloe, you can convince her to come home at a reasonable hour instead of keeping her mother up all night worried sick,” David says, and then he tries to shut the door.

He tries to shut the door in her fucking face.

Rachel reaches out, palm first, to stop it from closing and she thinks it’s the shock of her moving at all more than the force of her arm that stalls his motion. “Thanks for the tip,” she says, cloying, fixing her smile back into place. “If you want your wife to get some rest, maybe you could pick up a part-time job instead of forcing Joyce to pull doubles at the diner every weekend. Then Chloe might have a reason to come home, and you wouldn’t have to fear for your walls.”

The long seconds of silence that pass are delicious, the way David’s fists clench at his sides, the way his ‘70s porn ‘stache fucking _quivers_. He looks like an anxious Yorkie. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says.

“Hmm. You’re right. I guess you would still have to fear for your walls. You do love to hit things without any provocation.”

David opens and closes his mouth.

Rachel doesn’t give him time to formulate a proper response, instead withdrawing her arm and giving him a little wave. “I’ll just wait outside, I guess. Good luck patching that wall!”

She can hear the door slamming behind her as she turns to sit on the stoop, and it’s satisfying as hell.

She reaches for her phone without thinking, already planning the most dramatic way to start her text recap of the situation to Chloe, because if anything can get her to respond it’s going to be brutally deflating David’s ego in his own home, but stops short at her lock screen.

No new messages.

Slower now, she proceeds, navigating to her thread with Chloe. The last five messages have come from Rachel, the first from well over an hour ago, telling Chloe she’s coming over, asking where Chloe is, trying to check if she’s okay.

And Rachel _gets it_ , okay, it’s not like she doesn’t know how awkward things are right now. It’s not like she’s forgotten how horrible last night was, how awful they were to each other. But they’ve always had _rules_ and Chloe’s not following them right now.

Whatever they’ve been through, as ugly as things have gotten, Rachel has never left Chloe twisting in the wind like this. She’s never denied Chloe the knowledge that _yes,_ she’s safe, she’s okay.

No matter how mad they’ve been, they’ve never done that to each other.

And it’s fucking bullshit to start now.

It’s not who they are.

 **Well, this not answering your phone shit is cute** , Rachel types. **Be pissed at me all you want, but at least give your mom a call or something. There’s no reason to worry her at work like this.**

It feels good, for a moment, to just be annoyed. To stuff back her guilt and let herself be _angry_.

But anger’s like a fire; it dies out on its own if it isn’t fed.

The longer Rachel waits on Chloe’s stoop, craning her neck to see down the street every time she hears a car pass by, the less there is to keep it burning, and when she’s down to the coals all that’s left behind is this fog of gloom.

At least that’s what she thinks it is. But really, as she realizes they’ve hit the twelve-hour mark now, that they’ve never gone this long without speaking after a fight, it starts to feel more and more like what’s been burning has been something inside of her, like there’s an empty space opening up.

She makes like every romantic comedy she’s ever seen and starts filling that space with banana bread, picking little bits off one edge. There are two slices. Chloe won’t know the difference.

Because Chloe never knows the difference.

**Chloe, come on.**

She hits send.

She waits.

**Please talk to me.**

She hits send.

She waits.

**I miss you.**

She doesn’t hit send.

She waits.

An hour later, she still has no messages, and there isn’t any banana bread left either.

And she’s kind of sick to death of sitting here on this fucking stoop doing nothing, so she stands up to stretch her legs, and she calls Max to give herself something else to focus on.

Max, at least, answers on the second ring. “Hey! How’s it going, Rachel?”

“Hi Max,” Rachel greets her, humming into the receiver to buy herself some time. “It’s…not going as well as I’d hoped. Probably would be going better if I’d managed to track Chloe down yet. Have you heard anything?”

“She hasn’t texted you?” Max says, and Rachel can’t stop herself from flinching.

“Nope,” she says, tone forcefully light.

“Oh.” The silence that follows is awkward, Max no doubt beating herself up over the mishap, Rachel trying to think of _any way_ to recover without coming off as bitter or uncaring. “Sorry, I—”

“It’s fine,” Rachel cuts her off, grateful for the sentiment behind Max’s earnest, verbose apologies, but lacking the patience to suffer through another one right now. “I’m glad she got back to one of us, at least. I was getting kind of worried.”

“Well, she’s safe,” Max says, trailing off uncomfortably. “She made it into work alright today.”

Rachel wants to push, wants to demand a full recap, wants to know exactly what Chloe said and when. But she also doesn’t want to put Max in that position — or worse, to push and be denied. So she bites her tongue, swallows back her questions. “That’s good. I’m glad to hear it.”

“She probably just needs more time to cool down,” Max says.

And Max is sweet, Max is trying to be helpful, Max is probably genuinely hoping that her advice on the matter will be welcomed. Comforting.

Which is why the sudden wave of resentment Rachel feels kind of catches her off guard.

As if their childhood friends schtick makes Max such an expert, when it’s been Rachel out here, dealing with Chloe’s mood swings and insecurities and violent self-destruction for three years.

“Thanks, Max,” Rachel says, once the momentary rage has subsided and the guilt has set in. Max doesn’t deserve all that blame. She’s only trying to help. “You’re probably right.”

“She’s always been kind of, y’know, hot-headed like this,” Max continues, unnecessarily. “You just have to wait her out.”

_You’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong._

“I guess you would know,” Rachel says, and regrets it immediately. What went down between Max and Chloe before she was even in their lives isn’t her business, it’s not hers to use against either of them.

But Max doesn’t seem to have picked up on the slight, continuing brightly, “Yeah! Let me know how it goes, okay? I mean, if you want to.”

It only makes Rachel feel worse.

She promises to do just that, grateful when Max concludes their call.

If Rachel spends one more second hovering here outside of Chloe’s house she’ll probably lose her mind. She’s back across the lawn, in her car before she’s even decided what to do.

She could take Max’s advice, go back to Blackwell, get a head start on this week’s homework. Wait for Chloe to come to her.

She could go to her parents’ house, break into her dad’s liquor cabinet, invite a few friends and get a head start on her next hangover.

But Chloe’s working.

Rachel puts the car in drive and heads for the Snack Shack.

X.x.x

She’s been parked in the Snack Shack parking lot for about an hour when Rachel realizes two things.

First, she hadn’t asked Max how long Chloe was working today.

Second, while the banana bread from Arcadia Bakery was delicious, it did _not_ make for a satisfying lunch.

The result is that she’s stuck waiting outside a gas station for who knows how long, after _waiting_ at Chloe’s house for over an hour, and all she wants is to march in there, order a corn dog, slap her dad’s platinum card on the counter, and ask how much for a text back on the side.

No mustard, thank you. Just a fucking explanation.

It isn’t gonna happen. Rachel’s supposed to be the one extending an olive branch here, and while lunchtime visits are normally welcome, inciting an argument on the clock probably isn’t the best course of action. Getting Chloe fired would be the last nail in the coffin.

But man, could she go for a corn dog.

She tries being zen about it, turning on the radio, letting her seat back. But every song on every station seems like a love song today, and she just can’t handle it. The CDs in her car are all albums she’s listened to with Chloe — or worse, mixes Chloe’s made for her — and she can’t handle _that_ either, so she just rolls down all the windows and kills the engine completely.

The silence helps, but it’s not long before she feels cramped and restless inside the car. She has to get out.

It feels good to stretch her legs, to have a better view of the entrance to the convenience store, but now that she’s out it’s that much harder to tamp down the part of her that just wants to _go now_.

But she does anyway.

As much as this feels like a colossal waste of time, there’s no way it can be if this is the thing that could fix what she’d broken the night before.

By the time Chloe finally does come out, over two hours have passed and Rachel has had _a lot_ of time to think about how she wants to play this.

Chloe stopping short at the sight of her, jaw slack, eyes widened, is a reaction Rachel had kind of anticipated.

Chloe snapping her mouth shut, brows furrowed, stalking over, and laying into Rachel before she even gets a chance to say anything is a bit less expected.

“No,” Chloe says with a vicious head shake, brushing past Rachel and heading straight for the door of her truck. “Get out of here. I’m fucking tired, I’m not doing this with you right now.”

It makes her feel sort of deflated, actually. Rachel can admit that. And maybe it kind of pisses her off a little to get yelled at before she’s even had a chance to _do_ anything.

But she’s _zen_ , right? Someone’s got to be, anyway, and apparently it’s not going to be Chloe.

The sound of Chloe’s door slamming brings Rachel back to herself, gets her moving again, jogging around the truck bed and hopping into the cab from the passenger’s side before Chloe even gets the engine turned over.

“Hey, slow down, look — I brought you a peace offering,” Rachel says, slipping the blunt she’d packed earlier out of her pocket and holding it out over the seat. “No peace pipe required.”

Chloe does glance sidelong at her, long enough to see what’s on offer, but only scoffs in response. “You can’t buy me off, Rachel. Not this time. Get out.”

“Buy you off?” Rachel has to make a concerted effort to calm herself down, to maintain her zen, when she hears herself raising her voice. She expected Chloe to come out swinging, because that’s what Chloe does, and it isn’t wise to react so quickly.

It’s just that she thought they were way, _way_ past the petty bullshit in regard to their different tax brackets.

“I’m not trying to buy you off,” Rachel tries again, intentionally soft. “I just thought we could go to the beach or something, smoke a bit, keep things chill while I apologize.”

She can see Chloe’s hands flexing against the steering wheel. Chloe’s mouth stays shut tight, gaze fixed straight ahead, shoulders stiff.

Maybe Rachel should piss her off more often; it’s doing wonders for Chloe’s posture.

“I’m not trying to attack you, either,” Rachel continues, and here she reaches out to rest her hand on Chloe’s forearm, “just to talk. I just wanna talk to you.”

Rachel feels it like a blow to the body when Chloe pulls away.

Not pulls away.

 _Recoils_ , the muscles in her forearm jumping as she turns to escape Rachel’s touch, reeling around and starting in again: “Well, I _don’t_ wanna talk to you! Maybe ever! But definitely not right now!”

It’s almost physical, how Rachel can feel her cool starting to slip, like ice starting to crack and melt in the face of Chloe’s explosiveness. She doesn’t reign it in this time when her voice comes out louder and stronger than before. “And when were you planning on telling me that? Or that you were _safe_? For fuck’s sake, Chloe, you can’t send me one goddamn text message all morning but you can check in with Max when you’re already on the clock?”

“Oh, come on, Rachel. Take a fucking hint for once, like ‘I don’t want to see you’ or ‘stop following me’ or maybe ‘hey, don’t try to sabotage my relationship with my best friend because you’re an insecure little bitch who can’t handle not being the centre of my universe’!”

And that last one hurts, enough that Rachel can feel a prickling sensation behind her eyes, but she fights through it. “Hey, fuck you. Where was she for the last three years when you were getting blackout drunk on the train tracks and having nightly screaming matches with your parents? Where was she when no one else wanted to hang out with your onerous ass? Where _was_ she? _I’m_ your best friend, Chloe.”

“Yeah, I thought so _too_. But I hear there are just plenty of trysexuals using me to get back at daddy, so. At least most of them leave out the pretense. And the ten point vocab words.”

The edge on that one’s sharp enough to hit bone, but Rachel grits her teeth, forces the subtext from her mind because if she lingers on the implication right now she’ll lose it and she knows that. She has to believe that Chloe didn’t mean that how it sounded. “Oh, save the poor me shit for someone who might actually buy it. _You_ came on to _me_ last night, Chloe. It isn’t my fault we got interrupted.”

For just a second that stalls Chloe’s gears, but it doesn’t take her long to shift accordingly. “But it is your fault you made it so fucking obvious, and it’s _definitely_ your fault that you went out of your way to make everyone else uncomfortable. Asking Max to join us? Seriously? Did you actually think that was funny or were you just _that_ determined to fuck me, one way or another?”

“Look, I fucked up, okay?” Rachel hates the way her voice breaks at the end of the sentence, pushes her hair away from her face frustratedly. “I mean, I was wasted, but you’re right; I should _never_ have brought Max into it. That was stupid and it wasn’t cool. That’s why I’m here — apologizing. I’m trying to make this right.”

“Right for _who_ , Rachel?” Chloe spits, and Rachel’s never heard her name sound that way out of Chloe’s mouth. “I’m fucking _mad_ and I don’t want to fucking _talk to you_ and I would have thought that was obvious enough but you show up here anyway, acting all cute, like I’m just another member of your fucking fanclub. ‘Oh, Chloe’s pissed, I’ll just smoke her out and say sorry and bat my fucking lashes and she’ll get over it.’ But, hey, you finally proved you’re not fucking perfect, okay? And you can’t charm your way out of this one.”

“Chloe,” Rachel starts, not knowing what to say but feeling like she _has_ to say something. Anything. “Chloe, you—”

The collar of Chloe’s work shirt has shifted on her shoulder and from this angle, leaning over to _try_ to get Chloe to look into her eyes, she can’t help but notice the bruises.

Rachel’s heart stops in her chest, thinking of David. But no, Chloe didn’t go home last night.

A fight, then—

Rachel reaches out and it must take Chloe by surprise because she doesn’t even try to stop her or to duck out of the way when Rachel’s fingers find the buttons of her polo and start working them open. The blemishes are small, but too big to be finger marks, a deliberate line along her collarbone. And lower, from what she can see peeking up from the cup of Chloe’s bra.

“What the _fuck_?” Rachel doesn’t even try to control her voice this time, fingers twisting in the stupid, shitty cheap polyester blend of Chloe’s fucking ugly work shirt. She yanks Chloe closer without thinking, pulling her collar down further for a better look at the hickies.

“Fucking let go of me already,” Chloe snaps, prying Rachel’s hands off of her shirt. She’s halfway to re-fastening the first button when she pauses, dropping her hands to the hem of the shirt and lifting it over her head. “Alright, you want to look so bad? _Here._ ”

The tank top Chloe’s left in doesn’t show everything, of course, but Rachel sees enough. The purple-red marks scoring her shoulders and chest are all the more vivid in the light, so much so it starts to feel like they’re jumping off her skin and play-acting their origin stories in Rachel’s head, a porno she’d pay _not_ to have to see.

“What the fuck is this, Chloe?”

“Oh, come on, honor roll. Why don’t you tell me what it looks like?”

“It looks like you’ve been out acting like a slut while I was sick with worry, losing my mind over hurting you,” Rachel bites. Every word cuts on its way out and she aches, aches, _aches_ from it. “It looks like you’re full of _shit_ , Chloe.”

“You wanna talk about who’s full of shit, Rachel? You weren’t sick last night because you were worried about me, you were sick because you knocked back a gallon of vodka punch in an hour,” Chloe says. “It really drives you crazy, doesn’t it? That I don’t spend every waking hour worshipping the ground you walk on anymore.”

“What are you _talking_ about?”

“Like you’ve ever cared about who I fuck and when! The only reason you’re bent out of shape right now is because I said no last night,” Chloe says. “Just like how you got all fucking weird a couple weeks ago, all because I didn’t think I needed to have sex with you for you to wanna spend the night.”

“ _I wasn’t_ being—”

“You stopped calling, you stopped coming over, suddenly you were studying _all_ the time.”

“I was prepping for my goddamn SATs,” Rachel realizes she’s shouting about a half second before she realizes she doesn’t care. “I was trying to give you space.”

“You were punishing me for turning you down, because you’re a selfish egomaniac who can’t handle anyone who doesn’t bow to your every whim,” Chloe snarls. “A real daddy’s girl through and through, huh Rach?”

It’s then, thinking of her father and all the ways she doesn’t want to be like him, that Rachel stops holding back. In fact, she stops defending herself at all for the sake of trading blows: “Then you’d sure have a fucking type, wouldn’t you? You think you’re doing yourself a favour, going after every trust fund baby on campus with an alternative haircut? As _if_ , Chloe. You’re ‘that one girl in college’ and you _know_ that’s all you are to them.”

“Yeah? Well, at least they don’t pretend to be my friend after.”

The worst Rachel’s ever been hurt was on that hiking trip with her dad when she was ten. It was the worst pain she’d ever felt, strong enough to steal the breath right out of her lungs. She’d only broken her wrist, but she’d felt the shockwaves through her entire body.

This is a little bit like that.

Only there’s no one here to carry her home.

She’d always thought Chloe would be the one to pick her up. Never in a million years would she have expected her to be the one to push her into the fall.

 _Fuck_ Chloe for doing this to her after all the years they’d spent promising never to be the ones to hurt each other.

“Hey, look, I know you’re being super pissy right now or whatever because you think everyone else hates you as much as you hate yourself, but you did _not_ just pull the ‘fake friend’ card on me right now,” Rachel says, fingers curling into her palms, leaving raised red trails along her thighs. “ _Not_ after the last three years I spent talking you out of your weekly meltdowns.”

“My weekly meltdowns? Sorry to hear my shitty fucking life has been so hard on you. But, hey, good news, this is me officially letting you off the hook. You won’t have to deal with my _meltdowns_ anymore.”

Which is pretty rich, considering they’re in the middle of one right now. Rachel bites back the words, but doesn’t hold back her eye roll. “Can you stop acting like a victim for a fucking minute? I’m not David, I’m not Wells. I’m your friend. _Your real friend,_ Chloe, and you can believe that because if this was an act, I would have dropped it ages ago because it wouldn’t be fucking worth it.”

“You’re my _friend_ when I’m doing everything you want,” Chloe snarls. “I’m whatever you want when it’s convenient. Well, I’m done being your _friend_ if this is what it means, Rachel. I’m done being your fuck buddy, and your charity case, and your social experiment. I’m done with your fucked up bicurious mean girl head games.”

“ _You’re_ one to talk,” Rachel scoffs. “I stop kissing your ass for five minutes and suddenly I’m playing head games?”

“There’s nothing sudden about it!” Chloe’s on the offensive now, pale skin flushing with the heat of her words. “You make fun of all of these girls, you tell me I mean nothing to them, like you’re any fucking better? Like you’re not a huge hypocrite? Like you don’t just _totally_ get off on how _rebellious_ you’re being whenever you bring me around to your dad’s?”

Rachel opens her mouth to protest, because that’s the most tired argument Chloe has, but Chloe only keeps going.

“I mean, _fuck_ ,Rachel,” scoffing, “which is it? You don’t care or you’re jealous? Max is your friend, or she’s a threat? Am I a hapless idiot letting myself get taken advantage of or am I a slut for hooking up with whoever I want? Are you a possessive control freak for getting all hung up on it or just a _huge_ goddamn hypocrite? Stop trying to act like you’re any different, like you aren’t out here every other weekend fucking whatever random dude with six-pack abs and a dimebag in hand.”

“God, just shut the fuck up. It’s not like that,” Rachel snaps, queasy and overwhelmed.

Is this what Chloe actually thinks of her?

“Oh it’s not, huh? Then what’s it like, Rachel?” Chloe says. “ _Enlighten me_ , oh 4.0 GPA-having goddess.”

Finally, _finally_ Chloe stops talking, and when she does a feeling comes over Rachel that she can’t quite place. It’s something like what she’s felt so many times before in the cab of this truck, in the parking lot of this gas station, everything shot through with waning golden light as the sun sets on Chloe’s shift. How together they feel like they’re the sole occupants of a world apart.

 _Déjà vu,_ is Rachel’s first thought, but it’s wrong. They’re not smiling, not laughing, and even if Rachel wanted to she couldn’t lean into Chloe’s space right now, couldn’t curl into her side and breathe the worries of the day into her neck. Rachel’s certain she’s never felt so stiff next to her best fucking friend, that it’s never taken them so long to drive away, headed for some small adventure. She can tell because the sun’s getting weaker, because soon it’ll be dark.

And that’s what the feeling is, Rachel thinks, straightening her spine to regard Chloe, still looking expectant and dangerous in the wake of her rant. It isn’t a feeling at all, just the shadow of one. What used to feel like a big bubble of air to share in the middle of the ocean feels like a coffin to suffocate in, and Rachel fucking hates it.

She’s calm again when she opens her mouth. “I don’t have to explain anything to you,” she says, and does what she should’ve done in the first place: leaves the truck, shuts the door firmly behind her. Doesn’t look back.

X.x.x

“I don’t have to explain anything to you,” Rachel says, and Chloe’s only ever heard her voice that flat when she’s talking about Frank or her dad. She swings the door of the truck open and the metal creaks sudden and ugly.

 _No fucking way_ , are the words that get caught in Chloe’s throat. She tries to swallow past them, but it’s hard enough just to breathe. _You started this, now we’re going to finish this,_ she wants to add.

But Rachel’s out. She slams the door.

 _Stop her_ , Chloe thinks at herself this time, wrapping a hand around her own door handle. The metal’s cold in her palm. _You can’t let her do this to you._

But she can’t get her arm to work. She just sits there, breathing hard, chest pounding, face hot and red.

She hears Rachel’s car start.

_She can’t leave you here._

But she does.

She’s gone before Chloe can collect herself enough to move, tail lights a fading red blur in her rearview mirror.

 _Fuck_.

Her head hurts, a pressure behind her eyes that radiates ache throughout her skull. She doesn’t even realize she’s crying ‘til she swipes at them, trying to massage the pain away with her knuckles.

“ _Fuck_ ,” and her voice is so weak, cracked right down the middle, so _pathetic_ that her whole body’s wracked with immediate, visceral disgust. “Fuck,” she says, louder, stronger and it feels a little better. “Fuck, _fuck!”_

This curse she punctuates with a strike to the steering wheel, pain shooting up the side of her palm, rattling her wrist, sharp. It hurts; she yanks her hand back, rubbing the soreness away and hissing.

“Fucking _stupid_ ,” she says, mashing the heel of her palm into her eyes again. They still burn.

She’s not sure how much time passes, hunched over alone in the cab, colors dancing across the backs her eyelids from the pressure, trying to even out her breathing, calm the wild galloping of her heart.

It’s the buzz of her phone in her pocket that startles her back into herself, and she reaches for it without having to think.

Because it’s Rachel, it’s got to be, saying _I’m sorry for running out on you like that._ Saying _I don’t know what just happened either, but I want to fix it._ Saying _I love you, I’m sorry, It’ll be okay._

But the text is from her mother, and Chloe can’t be mad, not really. She knows that. Knows that Joyce starts to worry when she’s out too long too many days in a row, that a message asking if she’ll be home for dinner tonight is the inevitable conclusion of the last few days.

She also knows that she can’t fucking handle sharing a table with David tonight. The thought alone is enough to make her stomach lurch sickly and her heartbeat accelerate.

She can’t go home tonight.

That’s two nights in a row, that’s pushing it, that’ll freak her mom out and make David furious but there’s no way around it. She can’t be there when she’s already feeling this close to the edge.

Where then? Nicole’s again? No, no, that’s not what they are to each other. And, frankly, the last couple days having gone how they did, the thought of getting that close to another person, of how she might break apart, turns her stomach.

Justin? Trevor? They would be cool about it, she knows, but it would mean sneaking into Blackwell, practically begging Rachel for another confrontation. And she can’t do that. She won’t.

Max is absolutely out of the question; she’s already way more involved in this than Chloe ever wanted her to be.

 _Fuck_ , are those really all the friends she has in this shitty fucking town?

She misses Steph and Mikey with a sudden intensity so ferocious it makes her stomach physically ache with the sort of yawning, empty pain that she normally associates with skipping too many meals. The fantasy of hitting the road and not stopping until she’s parked outside of Steph’s dorm at WSU or curbside at the North’s new place in Chicago dies before she even has a chance to enjoy it. No way her truck would make it all the way to Illinois. And the last thing Steph needs is for Chloe to bring all of her bullshit right to her door. 

But she’s getting ahead of herself. Way too ahead of herself, she’s too sober and too currently-still-parked-at-her-work to worry about shit like where she’ll end up sleeping tonight.

Chloe takes a deep breath and then another and then a third. She wipes the lingering moisture from from the corners of her eyes, blinks them clear and types a short but hopefully not too alarming response to her mother’s text.

Then she gathers herself, lurches from the car and makes her way back inside the Snack Shack. Eric looks up, a little startled, when the door chimes upon her entrance.

“Hey, Chlo,” he says, and she thinks he’s checking her out before she realizes that his gaze lingering on her chest probably has more to do with the smattering of hickies than anything else. “Did you like…forget something?”

“Yeah,” she says, making a beeline for the back of the store where the booze is kept. She yanks open the glass door of the display refrigerator and grabs a bottle of Steel Reserve with a kind of detached, mechanical coolness that she wishes she’d been able to tap into during her screaming match with Rachel. “Just this.”

“Dude,” Eric says, looking around furtively and hopping over the counter to intercept her as she makes for the door. “There’s like…cameras and shit.”

“When was the last time anyone ever checked them? We record over them every few weeks anyway. Dumb cheap bastard still uses VHS, too. Just rewind like three minutes.”

“But what if—”

“C’mon, don’t be a pussy,” she taunts, pushing past him. “Owe you one, man. Later!”

She half expects him to follow her out, to try convincing her again but he doesn’t. She makes it back to the car, ignores the new text from her mom and tucks the bottle under the passenger seat, just on the off chance she has a run-in with Arcadia Bay’s finest on her way to…wherever she’s going next.

She chews on the thought for a moment, but it doesn’t take long for her to decide that she’s done enough thinking for the day. It’s easy enough to start the ignition and pull out of the parking lot and let muscle memory do the rest. She knows these roads almost as well as the lyrics to the angry punk she’s blasting while she drives.

Figures that she ends up all the way on the edge of town, the railroad tracks winding past the old mill. There’s a sick poetry to it, how many shows she’d been to with Rachel up here, how many late nights they’d spent drinking their way down the tracks.

It feels right that it’s all just a burned-out husk now.

x.x.x

The road that used to lead up to the mill is blocked off with a chain now, so Chloe has to drive past it until she finds a shoulder to pull off on. These roads don’t get a lot of traffic at night, outside of the odd trucker or two. It should be fine as long as no cops drive by; it feels like half of them know her truck by sight now. They always seem to make a point of hassling her, but who doesn’t anymore?

Still, the last thing she needs is a trespassing charge.

Or underage drinking, she thinks, using her shirt to unscrew the cap on the bottle of cheap malt liquor. The first pull goes down harder than she expected and she gags, but manages not to spit any out.

Maybe she should have stolen something a little less bottom-shelf.

Rachel’s the one who gets a kick out of getting wasted on the cheapest, nastiest beer she can find. White trash tourism. The thought almost leaves a worse taste in her mouth than the gutter beer does.

She forces herself to take another drink and walks further up the path toward the mill.

 _God_ , it’s like drinking something from a dog bowl.

Which she’d only done once. On a dare.

The bottle’s half empty and she only feels a little like throwing up by the time the skeleton of the mill is looming over her. A testament to her iron will and the regrettable fact that she’s drank more of worse booze, and lived to tell it, before.

She did a lot of that drinking right here, in fact, Chloe realizes as she approaches the mill, or what’s left of it. Most of the scaffolding is still standing, but to enter what used to be the bar she has to balance precariously on charred planks of wood, arms spread like wings.

When she stumbles she almost drops the bottle.

She remembers the summer the mill burned down. Same summer she’d met Rachel, gone to what must’ve been a couple dozen punk shows with her in two months, ignored warnings about air quality to sit up by the lighthouse and watch it all burn to the ground.

It’d felt exhilarating then. Like the spark between them could set the world on fire, the two of them against everyone else.

And now, seeing the wreckage up close…

Well, when there’s nothing left to burn, Chloe thinks, bitter as the taste in her mouth when she takes another pull.

The longer she’s there and the more she drinks, the more Chloe starts to feel like this might have been a mistake. By the time the bottle’s finally empty her whole body feels heavy and her eyes have started to sting. She finds a spot in the corner, using her phone to light a path in the dark and sweeps the ground with the sole of her shoe to feel for broken glass or metal debris. It’d be just her luck to get stabbed through the ass with some rusty rebar or something.

Sitting down helps her feel steadier, but now that she’s not moving as much the cold of the woods is starting to set in. She leans back gingerly, and tries to imagine what this place must have looked like three years ago, all caught up in flames. Firefighters had the whole road blocked off for miles, so none of them had been able to get close enough to see the place actually go down.

All they got left with was the wreckage. Chloe takes a deep breath and rubs her hands over her arms and thinks that maybe she can still catch a hint of smoke on the air.

Smoke.

Smoke, yeah. Sounds like a good idea. She pats her pockets down, praying she hadn’t forgotten her cigarettes in the truck. After a brief moment of panic, she unearths a crumpled nearly-empty pack of in one of the inside pockets of her coat. Parliaments. Rachel’s brand. She remembers the night they’d been out a few weeks ago and she’d run out of her own, had asked if she could bum and Rachel had given her the whole pack.

Always so eager to give everything away. It was something Chloe had appreciated, maybe even admired; her mistake was in assuming she was the only one on the receiving end.

Then again, she thinks bitterly as she struggles to get her stiff fingers to light the cigarette, maybe it’s her own damn fault for always asking, always needing.

It’s easy with alcohol in her veins, with her eyes falling shut, with the smoke from Rachel’s favourite cigarettes in her lungs, to allow her mind to drift toward the night before. Easier still because she isn’t at work or actively trying to fuck someone else.

She shouldn’t have asked Rachel upstairs with her.

She’d said no the last time and Rachel had actually backed off and it had been weird for a minute but things were _actually_ starting to feel like they could be normal again and then…

And then she’d gone and fucked it all up again.

A couple hours together, a couple drinks, a couple minutes dancing was really all it took for Chloe to lose her head, to give in completely, to turn right back into the desperate, needy little bitch Rachel had basically accused her of being just hours before.

It was just that she didn’t _want_ space from Rachel. Not really. She just wanted not to feel so inconsequential, so _used_ whenever she got too close.

But it was always too easy to get close to Rachel. Chloe could never fucking help herself around that voice, that smile, those legs. Unsupervised kid in a candy store, fucking puppy-dog dipshit fuckup.

And it was easier than ever, too, to feel like she needed to fucking _sandblast_ herself when Max caught her with her pants just about around her ankles.

The more the _merrier_?

As if she wasn’t up to enough shit these days to disappoint Max already, as if Rachel needed to fucking spell it out for her.

Max didn’t want seedy parties and casual sex and cigarette breath from Chloe. She wanted swingsets and blanket forts and spilled wine and, fuck, Chloe could pretend! She could shield Max from the realities of who she’d become in her absence, and they could cuddle up and watch movies, and in return Max would still love her.

Ironic that Rachel, Blackwell’s greatest actor, would be the one to tear down the facade, to rub Chloe’s nose in what she already knew: that girls like Max didn’t belong with girls like Chloe. And no amount of pretending or nostalgia could change that.

Chloe smokes until her lungs ache and the pack is empty. The cold has sunken into her body completely by the time she’s done. She can’t feel her ass or her toes or her fingers and she knows it’s probably time to go. It’s harder to make her way out through the wreckage than it had been to get into the burnt-out mill. She falls once, nearly lands on the bottle. The glass shatters and goes skittering along the floor, catching the light from the moon overhead. The clouds have cleared, so it all just… _sparkles._

Kind of beautiful, but mostly a hazard.

She thinks of Rachel and laughs, the sound more like a cough from her cold lungs.

Chloe’s shivering by the time she makes it back to her truck, though moving around helped some. She can actually feel her fingers when they fumble with the door handle, though she does drop her keys the first few times she tries to unlock the truck.

No way she can drive like this.

Maybe gambling with her own life was something she’d been comfortable with, once upon a time, but Chloe had never been able to accept risking someone else’s.

She collapses onto the seat, fishing her jacket out from under the seat to drape over her shoulders. Chloe falls asleep to the sound of passing trucks and dreams about broken glass and headlights that tear right through the darkness.

When she wakes up the sun is just starting to peek up over the trees and her head feels like it’s about to split open.

She stumbles out of the truck to go piss in the woods and throws up on her way. By the time she’s done and back in the truck, she’s made up her mind never to drink again.

By the time she pulls up to the curb outside her house, her palms are so sweaty they keep slipping on the wheel and she’s changed her mind again. She’d give anything for a shot of something strong.

Chloe kills the engine and waits for her heart to stop racing. If there’s anything she’s learned in the last few years it’s that courage doesn’t come all on its own, so Chloe ignores the sickly churning in her stomach and reaches for the last pack of cigarettes in her glove box, praying that nicotine will do what she can’t.

A light goes on upstairs. Chloe still can’t bring herself to move.

A few years sharing a roof with David has made her pretty good at sneaking into her own home. She’s even perfected the route up to the garage roof; it’s not really that hard anymore now that she’s so practiced at balancing on the fence. Maybe if she waits until her limbs feel less like jelly she can make it back to her room the hard way.

But she waits and she waits and the lights move in the house, charting the path of whoever’s awake inside and she only feels weaker.

Time’s running out, she knows. Whoever’s in there won’t stay inside forever. Go home or get lost, she has to do _something_ and soon.

But she can’t, she can’t, she can’t.

The door opens, finally, and Chloe lets loose a body-racking exhale at the sight of her mother.

It takes Joyce a moment to notice her truck, distracted like she always is in the mornings. When she does her eyes widen and then her brows dip low and Chloe’s breath stalls out in her chest as her mother marches across the lawn toward her.

Something on her face must give her away because Joyce’s expression shifts again, and suddenly she looks so _sad_ that Chloe winces, guilt wedging itself sharply between her ribs. She scoots over to the passenger side and rolls down the window so they can speak.

“Chloe,” is all her mother can manage at first, looking so stricken and so concerned and so _relieved_ it makes Chloe ache. She sniffs back tears and Joyce reaches through the window to brush her thumbs against the corners of Chloe’s eyes. “Hey.”

“Hey mom,” Chloe chokes, and then shakes herself loose, gently. The tenderness of her mother’s hands is too much to take right now. She scrubs a hand down her face roughly and clears her throat. “Sorry I didn’t call.”

“It’s okay,” Joyce lies and Chloe loves her so much. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

It’s the sincerity, the total lack of anger that almost tips Chloe over the edge again. Joyce should be _mad_ , she should be yelling. Chloe’s a shitty daughter and she knows it and it’s not fair that she’s always _doing this_ to her mom, but she doesn’t know how not to be a fuck up.

“Sorry,” she says again, swallowing hard past the lump in her throat.

Joyce just shakes her head, frowning that way she does when she can’t think of what to say.

“I’m making you late, huh?” Chloe sniffs, taking in her mother’s work uniform. Maybe she shouldn’t go inside at all, maybe she could just ask to go along with Joyce. They could open together, just like old times. Chloe could grab a spot in the back of the diner and let the smell of syrup and fryer grease and coffee calm her down.

“Don’t worry,” Joyce tells her, instead of answering.

Chloe’s just about to ask when she notices the curtains moving in the front window.

“Fuck,” she whispers, feeling dread fill up all her empty spaces again, like a physical weight that drags her body down toward the floor.

Joyce follows her gaze back to the front door, where David is stepping out and heading straight for them.

Chloe’s already tensing up, assuming a more closed-off stance and readying herself to start placating. Out of the corner of her eye she can see Joyce doing the same, turning with open palms toward David.

David who, of course, is already shouting. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, holding your mother up after she was up _all_ night worrying—”

Joyce closes the gap, pressing her open palms against his chest in an attempt to soothe him. “We’re just saying hello, David,” all lilting Southern charm. It’s a voice Chloe remembers Joyce using on belligerent Two Whales patrons. Sometimes with fed-up Blackwell faculty in Chloe’s disciplinary hearings before she got expelled.

She can’t recall ever hearing Joyce speak to William that way.

He caps the volume, at least, but he’s still all bull, snorting and glaring daggers at Chloe like she’s waving a red fucking flag in front of his face. “Hello, Chloe. Goodbye, Chloe.”

Chloe holds up her hands, genuinely too tired to fucking do this right now. “I’m just trying to go to sleep, man.”

“Then you should’ve been here eight hours ago, _man_! You’ve had no trouble finding other places to sleep the past two nights. I’m sure you could go sleep off your hangover on one of your dirtbag friends’ couches, if you all _love each other_ so much.”

The dig at her friends, so few and so precious, is almost enough to rouse Chloe into arguing with him, but despite all his blustering to the contrary, she doesn’t want to do that to Joyce. She’s resigned herself to staying quiet, nodding through it, and she’s just reaching for the ignition when Joyce butts in again.

“Chloe, no.” Joyce takes David by the cheeks, forces him to look her in the eye. Something in the way she speaks next makes Chloe feel like she’s the one being spoken to anyway. “This is Chloe’s _home_. She has a right to be here.”

Chloe appreciates the gesture but just saying so isn’t enough to make it feel that way.

“She should have been home earlier,” David grouses, though even he starts to lose steam in the face of her mother’s insistence. “She should have called.”

“Yes,” Joyce agrees, and something in Chloe deflates a little. It’s not like she’s wrong, but it still stings to see how David’s shoulders straighten at her agreement. “We can all talk about this later tonight, but I’m not leaving her out on the street like a misbehaved dog.”

And she needs _that_ conversation like she needs a hole in the head, but a hole sounds preferable to the pounding Chloe’s feeling there now, so.

David heaves a sigh, but stepping back from Joyce he gives one final curt nod. “Okay. Get in the house, then. But your mother’s right. We _will_ have words later,” he says to Chloe, like he expects her just to leave him to Joyce, to let the _adults_ talk.

The look on Joyce’s face, so tired, when Chloe gets out of the truck has her meeting his expectations for once.

She kisses Joyce on the cheek, quick, and wishes her a good day at work. She can feel David’s angry eyes on the back of her head when she climbs the front steps.

The oblivion of her bed never felt better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if anything motivates us to keep going, it's feedback, so please leave us some delicious commentary!
> 
> our tumblrs are [holdsteady](http://holdsteady.tumblr.com/) and [explosionshark](http://explosionshark.tumblr.com/)\--feel free to talk to us there too!


	6. Running

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter gave us particular trouble in the planning stages, but it's finally here! we're going slow but we're going. thanks for hanging around to read, y'all.
> 
> this chapter takes place roughly a week after the big fight went down.
> 
> chapter title from "running" by bully.

“Max? You okay?”

It’s Rachel’s voice more than the hand she drops to Max’s shoulder that jolts her awake. And it’s the saliva pooled at the corner of Max’s mouth more than the fact Rachel caught her sleeping that makes the whole thing utterly mortifying.

“What?” Max asks, groggy, swiping the sleeve of her hoodie down her chin casually. She hopes.

If Rachel noticed she was drooling she doesn’t look prepared to call her out on it. Quite the opposite, actually, eyebrows lifting in gentle concern. “Is everything cool? Do you wanna go home and nap? We can rain check.”

“No, no.” Max licks her lips, finding her voice a little sleep-hoarse, and it’s embarrassing but Rachel’s being so _kind_ about it that she feels compelled to keep going, let the tone even itself out with time. “We’re here, I’m, uh, _refreshed._ Ready to go.”

“You were kinda out of it in English today, too,” Rachel notes, shifting a little so that Max can appreciate the tenderness of her frown head-on. “Trouble sleeping?”

This is where it gets tricky, because Max doesn’t want to _lie._ But it’s been a week since Chloe and Rachel’s big blowout. A week of them not talking, a week of Max awkwardly juggling the fact that she suddenly has _two_ very needy and incompatible friends vying for her time. A week of getting used to Rachel’s sudden exponential interest in her, a week of late-night calls from a sleepless Chloe.

She hadn’t meant to stay up so late last night, but Chloe had called right as Max was settling into bed. And it felt good, laying there under her fairy lights, warm beneath a pile of blankets, just to let Chloe’s voice wash over her. It felt good to have that much of Chloe’s attention, even if the circumstances leave her a little guilty at times like this.

Max has always been steady, for better or worse. An unremarkable life of moderation, good decision-making. Chloe makes her reckless, though. And the two of them together have never been particularly good at keeping to their bedtimes.

But there’s no way she can say that to Rachel, not when every mention of Chloe’s name imbues a type of brittleness to her smile, so instead she says, “Not exactly. I just, um, car rides make me sleepy. But I’m totally good now, I swear,” she adds, patting the camera bag in her lap.

“Okay then, wanna get set up, sleepyhead?” Rachel’s laughing, light and melodic as always, and unbuckling her seatbelt. “ _So_ cute, though. Like a little kid.”

If the drool wasn’t obvious, the blush spreading over Max’s whole entire face right now certainly is. “I mean, it started that way. My parents liked to go on pretty long road trips, take me camping.” Her own laugh sounds shaky and uncertain in contrast to Rachel’s. “Dad usually had to carry me into the tent, the drive would knock me out so hard.”

Rachel’s grin is so big. “An outdoorswoman, huh? You should take me camping sometime, Max.”

“Oh, you probably don’t want that. I was never any good at building a fire or pitching a tent or anything,” Max says, faltering at the end of her sentence. And it would have been fine but then Rachel just _grins_ and she can feel her face start to burn.

“I could probably manage a fire,” Rachel says, mercifully. “And who needs a tent? We’ll just sleep out under the stars.”

“Oh,” Max says, because she can’t think of anything else to say when she’s imagining what it would be like to share a sleeping bag with the prettiest girl in school. “Okay.”

“We should do our next shoot out in the woods,” Rachel says with a thoughtful hum. She exits the car and Max follows and together they make their way down the beach while Rachel plans out all the details of their impending three-day camping trip/photo shoot at Crater Lake.

“So, I was thinking right around here,” Rachel says, slowing her pace and turning around to face Max as she continues to amble backwards. “Does that work for you, Mr. DeMille?”

“Uh, yeah,” Max says, taking a long look around at the location Rachel had apparently already scouted. It’s a nice little section of beach: private, so they won’t have to worry much about interruptions. Not that they get many crowds out here in the middle of winter. A strong gust of salt air rolls in off the water and Max shivers, yanks her hoodie tighter around herself. “Are you sure you wanna do this shoot today, though? It’s a little cold. We could schedule some studio time at Blackwell next week, instead.”

“Please, Max, I’m a professional,” Rachel says, already starting to drag the zipper of her sweater down. “Though we should definitely do that too, if you’re down. I’m pretty due for a complete portfolio overhaul, y’know?”

“If you’re sure,” Max says.

“I’m sure,” Rachel says. “Besides, the light’s _gorgeous_ right now. You don’t wanna waste golden hour, right?”

“Hey, wait a sec, actually,” Max says, reaching out a hand to Rachel’s wrist to stop her from trying to shrug off her hoodie. “Let me take a few like this.”

“Like this?” Rachel repeats, so soft that Max realizes she’s surprised her a little. She looks down at herself, frowning gently at her baggy hoodie and ripped up jeans like they’re some kind of puzzle she hasn’t quite worked out.

“Yeah,” Max affirms confidently, despite the insistant sharpness of anxiety in the back of her mind saying that it’s too much, it’s too weird, too out of line. Rachel blinks and then smiles, slow and radiant and Max doesn’t think twice, ignores the voice completely, as she raises her Polaroid and takes a shot of her standing there, wind-tousled and radiant on the beach in the middle of winter.

Rachel gasps and laughs and covers her face with her palms, giggling, and Max takes another photo. Then another. Rachel finally gets in the spirit, snapping into a variety of ridiculous, silly poses that send them both into peals of laughter.

“Perfect,” Max grins, finally lowering the camera, tucking the photos away even as the last of them still develops, laughter still clinging to her breath. Her phone buzzes against her hip and she reaches into her pocket, glances at the notification, and notices the time. It’s cold and if Rachel wants to do this thing today, she shouldn’t keep her out here any longer than she needs to — no matter how nice it is to get her to laugh like that. “Thanks.”

“Thanks yourself,” Rachel beams, fingers absently toying with the thin silver thread of a necklace that disappears under her shirt. “So I guess we should get on with it, huh?”

“Yeah,” Max says. “Don’t wanna waste the golden hour and all.”

“Right. Okay, so,” Rachel twists to retrieve the backpack she’d dropped in the sand when they arrived. “I couldn’t quite decide what to bring for this, so I thought I’d take some options and have you help me pick.”

Max takes a few tentative steps forward, craning her neck, curious to see what’s inside, but it’s miscalculated and Rachel turns around too fast and then she’s only a few inches away, holding the bag open to reveal its contents.

Rachel isn’t fazed, of course, takes the opportunity to lean in close. “I couldn’t pick between classic modern beach vibes,” she explains, pointing out a black bikini that’s _definitely_ not going to provide enough coverage for the weather, “and Baywatch,” indicating a fire-engine red one-piece swimsuit.

For all the seaspray in the air, Max’s mouth is maybe dryer than it’s ever been. She licks her lips and it does nothing. “I, um,” she starts, and has to stop because _wow_ , words will _not_ come out and she’s starting to sort of wish that it were quicksand underfoot instead of rocks and driftwood.

Of course Rachel doesn’t relent, all expectant smile and cocked head, _clearly_ awaiting _some_ kind of answer.

All Max can see in her mind’s eye is skin, skin, skin, the belly button ring she’s seen outlined under Rachel’s clothes, and in service of avoiding a complete breakdown and consideration for the weather, she eventually manages a high, tight, “Uh, Baywatch?”

Rachel breaks into a full grin, and Max has the distinct feeling that no matter what she answered with, it would’ve been treated as the right answer all along.

“I was thinking that too! Wanna see if I can do Pam justice,” Rachel says, and then she’s pulling a big beach towel out of the backpack, handing it off to Max. “Hold this so I can have some privacy?”

Max stares.

“While I change?” 

Max isn’t _sure_ but she _thinks_ she blacks out for a few seconds before she starts running on autopilot, forcing a big stupid smile to try and offset the effects of the blush she’s sure is crawling up her cheeks. “Oh, yeah, of course,” she says, maybe too enthusiastic. “Wouldn’t want anyone to...see…”

She holds an edge of the towel in either hand and spreads her arms wide and looks at the ground while Rachel shrugs out of her hoodie and everything else, wishing it would swallow her up whole.

It feels like an eternity before Rachel shoves her, just lightly, in the shoulder, and Max looks up to see curves in red and legs and legs and legs.

“Well, Max? What’s your professional opinion?” Rachel asks, voice as bright as the sun hitting the edge of the water.

“Um. Pam would be proud.”

“Awesome,” Rachel chirps, and then bites her lip. She leans in close, dropping her voice to a whisper that almost doesn’t carry across the sounds of the waves. “Didn’t peek, did you?”

Max’s breath catches in the back of her throat when she tries to protest at first, and when she finally manages to, the words come out in disbelieving gasps. “What? No! Rachel, I would never,” she starts.

Rachel presses a finger to Max’s lips, effectively hushing her. “That’s a shame.” She winks like it’s the most casual thing in the world and turns back to her backpack, packing her street clothes inside.

Max breathes out a lungful of air stalled a few beats too long in her lungs, watches as it turns to steam and blows away in front of her, and feels suddenly certain that if Rachel turns around and touches her like that again her whole body will do the same.

It’s kind of a miracle she manages to keep it together for the rest of the shoot. She’s worked with models before, of course, but there was something so informal, so intimate about just the two of them out here. Rachel’s a capable subject, warm and friendly as she always is, but surprisingly serious and businesslike when Max has a suggestion or a request. She’s surprisingly easy to work with, once Max gets over her nerves and they fall into a rhythm.

They do the work on digital, since it’s for Rachel’s portfolio and not Max’s collection. Besides, it’s good to keep her skills sharp. As much as she loves her Polaroids, Max knows the work she’ll get after school will probably be stuff like this. With Rachel’s permission, Max knows she might even be able to use a few of these for class, after she’s done editing them.

“Okay, okay, that’s really good,” Max says, standing up from where she’d crouched on the ground. Her knees feel cold from where they’d been pressed into the cool sand and she shakes an ankle to clear the grains still clinging to her jeans. She lets the camera go, feels it thump against her breastbone as she walks toward Rachel, the nylon strap catching on the tiny hairs on the back of her neck. “Here, let me just…”

Rachel’s pliant, allowing Max to help her into a standing position, helping ease her down from the rocky perch she’d climbed onto. Max drops to her knees unthinking, swiping the sides of her hands down Rachel’s legs without thinking to help clear them of sand as well.

“Oh ouch,” she murmurs, dragging the pads of her fingers along the cluster of indentations on the outside of Rachel’s thighs, where her bare skin had pressed into the craggy rocks. “Does that hurt?”

Rachel’s watching her with a look Max can’t quite place, and it takes her a beat too long to answer. “Huh?”

“Your legs,” Max tries and Rachel’s mouth slackens a little in recognition.

“Oh, yeah,” she says, grinning now. A strong gust blows past, cutting right through Max’s cotton hoodie and she feels Rachel’s skin springing up goose flesh under her fingers. 

“Aren’t you cold?” Max asks, frowning and rising, already fumbling with the zip of her hoodie before Rachel has a chance to answer.

“A little, I guess. But we don’t have to call it quits, yet, y’know. I can handle it,” Rachel says even as she allows Max to maneuver her into the sweater.

“We got enough for today,” Max says. “I can probably get these done by the end of the week. Unless you need them sooner?”

“Get what done?”

“Like, edited and stuff,” Max says, starting to feel bad for not wrapping the shoot up sooner. Rachel tucks her hands into the sleeves of the hoodie and wraps her arms around herself, distracted by the cold.

“Oh, yeah, of course,” Rachel laughs, easily and lets her head tilt with her smile. “The end of the week’s more than fine. Maybe I can come over one night when you’re working on them? You could probably teach me a few things.”

“Oh, sure,” Max says, flushing a little at the thought of having Rachel in her room, watching her work. She’ll have to hide her bear. Clean up for sure, only leave her cooler CDs out where they could be seen. Maybe she’ll borrow a few more Bradbury books from Kate, re-pack those John Green novels into the box in her closet. “Yeah, that’d be cool.”

Rachel beams and they pack up to head back to the car. Rachel shimmies back into her jeans there on the beach, slipping them on over the bathing suit and when she’s done she catches Max watching her and winks, like they’re sharing a secret.

Then Rachel’s rushing her back to the car, thanking her profusely all the way.

“You busy tonight?” Rachel asks, idling at a red light. She drums her fingers along the steering wheel to the beat of the song on the radio, something electronic and downtempo that puts Max instantly at ease in the passenger seat. “Dana’s movie club is meeting tonight, I think, if you wanted to be my plus one.”

“Oh, uh, yeah, sorry,” Max winces, picking at a frayed string on the hem of her shirt. “I kinda already have plans.”

“Oh, yeah?” Rachel says, and the car starts rolling through the intersection, a little choppy to start.

“Yeah,” Max says and braces herself for Rachel to push for more details to ask where and when and who with. But she doesn’t, just keeps her eyes on the road, so Max feels like it’s probably obvious. It puts a knot in her stomach, a sinkingness that’s so at odds with the floaty ease she’d felt throughout the rest of the afternoon. “But I’d love to do something another night.”

“Yeah, of course,” Rachel says, and there’s no hint of resentment in her voice but Max still feels bad. A beat, and then, “So. Do you want me to drop you off at her house or should I just take you back to Blackwell?”

Yeah. It was definitely obvious. “The bus stop would be fine,” Max says, a little breathless, already regretting it. She should have just said Blackwell. It wasn’t a far walk.

“Don’t be silly, I’ll just take you all the way there,” Rachel cuts herself off, frowning. “Unless you’d like, get shit for it if she saw you coming out of my car or something.”

“No, no, no,” Max insists even though, now that she thinks about it, yeah, that would kind of be super uncomfortable. “I just didn’t want to put you out.”

It sounds so weak. Max lets her head roll into the window, watching the cars and buildings pass on their right and wishing for a way to skip past the next awkward ten minutes of her life.

“You’re not,” Rachel insists. Max definitely feels like she is, but she doesn’t want to argue. “I’ll take you to the corner, okay?”

It’s a compromise devoid of accusation and the gentleness of the offer slows the beating of Max’s heart back to something approaching normal.

“Okay,” she says, quiet. And then, “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Rachel says, reaching out a hand across the center console and squeezing Max’s knee affectionately. “What are friends for?”

x.x.x

There’s no truck in the driveway when Max walks up to the Price house. Rachel could have let her off at the curb after all. Max knocks anyway and Joyce lets her in.

“What are you doing without a coat?” she scolds gently, pulling Max inside the house by her wrists. “It’s winter, for goodness sake. What would your mother think?”

Honestly, if her mother knew she’d let a pretty girl drive away with her coat, she’d probably never stop teasing her for it. But she’d be too embarrassed to say say something like that to Joyce so she just shrugs, sheepish, and politely declines when Joyce offers her a plate of food.

Joyce frowns and Max feels a tickle of guilt but she refuses to give in. Chloe might want to go out and get something, whenever she gets back.

It’s a little weird, being in Chloe’s room without her after all this time, but it presents an opportunity to snoop that Max hasn’t really had yet.

Not that she finds anything she doesn’t expect. The drawers are all band tees and ripped jeans punctuated by the odd tightly-wrapped paper bag of weed, the shelves full of dog-eared music mags and CDs mismatched to their cases. In a strange way it’s comforting, nosing through it all and being able to catalogue all of the things that make Chloe...Chloe.

But of course it’s just one more familiar thing that Chloe always has a surprise in store for her, and Max is genuinely taken aback when deep in a dresser she finds a CD-R marked up with a crude cartoon treasure chest and the words _PIRATE POWER_.

She remembers drafting three different versions of their tiny cartoon selves before she landed on these ones, fit to burn music to. She remembers her palms sweating when she presented Chloe with the mix. She remembers listening to the whole thing together in this very room, but for some reason she’d never even imagined that it might be something Chloe would hold on to.

It’s even more surprising to find that the back isn’t even scratched up too bad, and it’s entirely on impulse that Max takes it to the stereo to see how well it plays.

It’s out of necessity that, hearing the opening notes of the first song and feeling her knees grow weak, she makes her way to the bed.

And it’s different, yeah. But it’s comfortable, like that old heavy blanket at the foot of Chloe’s bed, that she hauls over her shoulders, worn rough by the years but just as heavy as she remembers it. It’s cozy, the old songs and the old blanket and the silhouettes of glow-in-the-dark stars long since taken down lulling her into a kind of reverie and, eventually, a very real slumber.

Then the bed dips and she finds herself blinking awake, slow. The music’s still playing as soft as before, but the song’s different and the the bright golden sunlight filtering in through the window’s been replaced by the paler, dimmer glow of a street lamp outside.

“Hey,” Chloe’s whispering, looming on her knees over Max on the mattress and nudging Max over with her elbow. “Scoot, scoot.”

Max does, sleepily, too warm and comfortable to be embarrassed at having been caught dozing where she shouldn't for the second time that day. “Hey.”

Chloe slides under the blankets, the bare skin of her arms cold when it presses into Max’s. She shivers and turns a little on her side, throwing an arm across Chloe’s chest unthinkingly. “You’re cold.”

“Sorry,” Chloe says through a big sigh, and presses her cheek into the top of Max’s head. When she speaks, it’s in a puff of sharp, minty breath. That awful, tingly mouthwash that Max could never use without tearing up. “I was outside.”

“‘S’fine,” Max says and yawns, feeling herself come back to consciousness by degrees. “Where’d you go?”

“Just out,” Chloe says and Max wonders if the evasiveness is supposed to sting this way or if she’s just being a baby, taking things too hard. “I had to get a couple things.”

She swallows back the questions on her tongue. “Okay.”

“I didn’t mean to wake you up, you know,” Chloe says. “You looked so cute sleeping. Kinda like when we were kids and you’d always pass out first when you stayed over.”

“Not always,” Max grumbles, because what about that time Chloe’d sprained her wrist at hockey practice and Max had made her parents let her go home with the Prices from the hospital. They’d slept downstairs in the living room and Chloe had fallen asleep only twenty minutes into _The Parent Trap_ , her legs in Max’s lap, face lit up all blue from the glow of the TV screen.

Chloe doesn’t argue. “Pirate Power, huh?”

“What?” Max frowns, shaking off the last haze of sleep with a gentle toss of her head. 

“That’s what you’re spinning, right? Our old mix?”

“Oh.” She hadn’t expected Chloe to recognize it. The fact that she has fills the gaps between Max’s ribcage up with something warm and gooey. “Yeah. I was kind of surprised to find it, actually.”

“I was a little surprised to hear it. Pretty sure I left that one put away, you snoop.” There’s no real annoyance in Chloe’s voice, so Max doesn’t bother to act ashamed at being called out. “I kept a lot of our old stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Our old mixes, obviously,” Chloe says, voice low and rumbly. “Most of our old comics and stuff are in a shoebox in the closet somewhere. I could get them out sometime, if you wanna see. Uh. What else? Oh, the old jawbreaker—”

“Oh, Chloe, _no_ ,” Max whines. “You couldn’t have—”

“I didn’t, chill,” Chloe laughs. “Though not for lack of trying. I left it on my desk for a week and then there was this whole big ant problem and Joyce made me throw it out.”

“It must have been so gross,” Max says, feeling equal measures repulsed by the idea of Chloe keeping their disgusting old candy around and fondness that it had meant enough to her to be worth the effort.

“Oh yeah,” Chloe says, clearly delighted by Max’s squeamishness. “Right at the end there? It started to grow _fuzz._ ”

Max’s groan of disgust is cut short by a noise from downstairs. It takes Max a second to identify the sounds rising from the floor below as voices. David’s and Joyce’s.

She pauses, not sure what to do, waiting for Chloe to say something, but when she looks up Chloe’s eyes are shut, her face turned to the ceiling, breaths so slow and even Max almost wonders if she’s asleep.

She shakes Chloe lightly, curling her arm tighter around Chloe’s ribcage. “Hey.”

“Yeah?” Chloe’s slow to answer, eyes still shut.

“Is everything, like, okay down there?” Max isn’t sure if it’s the right thing to ask. It doesn’t even feel like what she wanted to ask, but when she tries to chase down that feeling there’s no conclusive answer.

Chloe shrugs in her arms. “Yeah, David’s probably just pissed about something stupid. My mom knows how to handle him, it’ll be fine.”

It doesn’t really sound fine. Max can count the number of times she’d heard her own parents yell at each other like that on one hand. And here’s Chloe, sounding pretty casual about it. Either it happens a lot, or she’s putting on a front for Max’s sake.

Maybe both.

“Oh, okay,” Max says, instead of pushing because she’s not sure what good it will do anyway. Things were so nice, just a minute ago, and she would feel like a bad friend for making things harder on Chloe now, especially with how the last week has been for her.

Max tries to relax past the awkwardness that seems to have slipped into the slight gaps between them, like some unwelcome sleepover guest. Chloe’s stiff under the arm slung over her chest, gone so still that Max can all but hear the gears turning in her head, so tense that she doesn’t yield at all when Max tries to snuggle in closer, close some of those gaps up.

That’s another thing that’s different, Max supposes. William would call to them from downstairs and the result would be playful banter or giggle fits—a roll of the eyes at worst if he wanted some type of chore done. It was always easy, though, and now all sense of ease had gone away. David only had to yell once and Chloe was drawn tight like a rubber band that Max _really_ didn’t want to see snap.

Given the events of the last week it’s almost funny that Rachel is the first thing that comes to mind when Max thinks of ways to diffuse the tension. Any other time and it’d be a no-brainer to text her, get some advice from a girl who could change the atmosphere of an entire room with an easy smile and a well-placed compliment or two. But then the memory of the ice in Chloe’s voice as she fastened her belt fades in, Max getting off at the corner mere hours ago so Rachel’s car wouldn’t be seen.

So no Rachel. But what would Rachel _do_?

Max leans up onto her elbow and tries again. “Hey.”

Chloe doesn’t answer verbally this time, blue eyes sliding over in silent question.

“Do you want to,” Max starts, chewing the inside of her lip, “um, do you want to go...somewhere else?”

At first Chloe looks surprised, then kind of amused, a disbelieving smirk twisting up the side of her mouth.

Max tries not to be offended, because any reason for Chloe to smile right now is a good one.

“Max Caulfield, are you saying you want to sneak out?” Chloe asks.

“Uh, well—”

“No way. You’re in it now, hippie. Only way out’s through the window. Got somewhere in mind?”

Max shakes her head. “Not really. Where do you _go_ at”—she checks her phone for the time— “Eight at night?”

Chloe smirks. “C’mon, Seattle couldn’t have been that boring.”

Max rolls her eyes, shoving Chloe’s shoulder with the heel of her palm and hopes the low light hides the pink glow of her cheeks. “Shut up, I didn’t realize it was that early.”

Chloe sits up, still smirking, but starts ticking off options on her fingers, instead of keeping up her teasing. “Well, people might be hanging out at the underpass. There’s the junkyard. Punk house on Maple. Shit, we could just hit the corner store.”

The last one has Max perking up, having been wondering what she’d gotten herself into. It’s hard to imagine a situation where a trip to the gas station could lead to as much trouble as traipsing around heaps of trash at night or crashing a house full of Chloe’s punk friends. “We could do that. Get slushies, maybe some five-cent candies. It’d be like old times.”

“We could get another jawbreaker,” Chloe says, eyes flashing.

“Chloe, _no_.”

She just laughs and it’s real and it unties some of the knots in Max’s stomach that even the distant yelling from downstairs can’t tighten back up.

They decide that Chloe should go first, since she actually knows how to get down from the roof without breaking her neck. And she makes it look easy enough, sliding out of the open window with practiced ease, palms steady on the sill, feet sure on the roof. She coaxes Max out after her gently, palms warm against the skin of Max’s bare arms. The slope of the roof is steeper than Max expected, but the sharp spike of fear she’d been expecting was muted by Chloe’s insistent grip.

She only let go long enough to scramble down the side of the house, using the fence to ease herself down to the ground silently. That was the scariest part for Max, turning on all fours on the roof and lowering her feet down. But Chloe’s hands found her again in the dark, closing around her ankles, guiding them to place. Sliding up the length of Max’s legs as she lowered herself further, resting at her hips until Max is finally close enough to hop down.

“Not so bad, right?” Chloe grins down at her and Max shivers, mostly from the cold.

She casts a longing glance back up at the window to Chloe’s room, propped open with an old physics textbook. Too late to grab a jacket now. Oh well. “Nah. Not so bad.”

“C’mon,” Chloe says and takes off down the driveway.

“Hey, wait,” Max has to jog to catch up, seizing Chloe by the wrist and tugging her to a stop.

“What’s up?” Chloe asks, voice low, glancing mindfully back at the house. 

Max drops her voice too. “Can we take the truck? It’s kinda cold.”

“Uh,” Chloe sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, exhales through her nose. “Nah, c’mon, let’s just walk.”

It throws Max for a moment, actually. It’s not a particularly big deal, really— it’s not like a ten minute walk in the cold’s going to kill her. But she hadn’t expected Chloe to say no.

The thing is they’re not in the habit of saying no to each other. Not really. Not when it’s things like this, matters of comfort, easy to accommodate. It’s stupid, but the unexpected denial has Max feeling jilted.

“I forgot to grab a jacket,” Max protests, putting just enough of a whine in her voice to leave Chloe rolling her eyes but slowing down guiltily nonetheless. “Chloe, I’ll _freeze_.”

Chloe huffs, crossing her own bare arms dramatically, a puff of steam rising up past her face as if to undercut her point before she can make it. “Seattle’s even further north. I thought it would have made you tougher.”

Max doesn’t dignify that with a response, just pushes her point because she can read Chloe well enough to spot the waver in her resolve. “If we take the truck we can go park somewhere. Chill in the cab with our drinks—”

“Slushies, by the way? It’s the middle of winter and you’re apparently _freezing_ , so why would you even—”

“—listen to some music,” Max continues, heedless. “ _C’mon._ ”

Chloe winces, running a restless hand through her hair before shaking her head like a dog. She heaves a dramatic sigh and stomps past Max toward the truck. “Just…”

It feels like a victory, with Max at her heels, watching Chloe leaning into the cab. But when Max makes her way around to the passenger side door Chloe leans across the seat to slap the lock shut. Then she’s sliding back out of the truck, easing the door shut delicately and tossing a thick denim jacket at Max’s face.

“Hey,” Max says, a shade too loud. Chloe shushes her, urging her down the driveway with a palm on her shoulder.

“There, now you won’t freeze,” Chloe says, smug.

Max shrugs her way into the jacket, sleeves hanging inches past her fingertips. It’s warm and pleasantly heavy, which somehow makes this whole thing more annoying instead of less. “You’re being _so_ stubborn.”

“Oh, pot meet kettle,” Chloe mutters and Max feels the pinpricks of annoyance tingling under her skin get suddenly sharper. Before she has a chance to respond though Chloe keeps going, quickening her pace so Max has to almost jog to keep up. “Max, I can’t drive you. I’m not good to drive. Okay?”

“What do…” Max cuts herself off, catching Chloe’s meaning a second too late. She thinks back to waking up on Chloe’s bed, the smell of mouthwash, the extra cologne, that particular sort of shine to Chloe’s eyes that she’d misread as excitement but was probably just booze. “Chloe, it’s a Thursday night.”

“I know what day it is,” Chloe snaps, hunching her shoulders. Max falters, a little stung by her tone, stomach sinking at how quickly the warmth between them had cooled, but still absently wishing that Chloe would slow down, that everything would slow down. They could share the jacket. They didn’t both have to be cold. “I just… I dunno. Fuck. I thought you’d come by later.”

“I told you I’d meet you at six,” Max points out. “I was half an hour early.”

“Yeah, well, I know your little shoot with Rachel was today so I just thought—”

“Chloe,” Max interrupts, chest aching suddenly as the pieces start to fall into place. It stings, hearing Chloe doubt her. And it makes her feel guilty. And honestly, it pisses her off because she _knows_ she hasn’t done anything wrong and she wants to be more angry at Chloe than she is, but mostly all she feels is tired and sad.

Chloe, to her credit, does pause, finally. But Max can’t figure out what to say, so the silence doesn’t last long.

“I thought you’d bail. Or just get caught up and be late. I don’t know. I thought I had more time.”

“I wouldn’t bail on you,” Max says, because she still hasn’t figured out how to tell Chloe what she’s feeling in a way that wouldn’t make this all even more of a mess.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Chloe says and Max feels it like a blow. It must show too, because Chloe stops and blanches and pulls Max into her arms. “I’m sorry. That was fucked up, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just…”

She trails off, tugging her hair back with a frustrated hand, looking about as frustrated with herself as Max has ever seen her. Max leans into Chloe’s body, finds she doesn’t have the strength to chase down whatever Chloe was going to say next. They’ll talk later, if she can push herself not to be a coward, but right now it’s easier to let it go.

The rest of the walk to the store is slow and quiet. Chloe makes her a coffee, loading it up with a cocktail of different flavored creamers. It’s almost too sweet to drink, but Max likes the way it warms up her throat and her hands on the walk back to the house.

They sit in the truck, parked in the driveway in the dark. Chloe plays them something quiet and sweet on her phone, acoustic guitars twanging through the tinny speaker of her phone. There’s a gap between them that Max isn’t sure how to fill, swimming in her too-big borrowed jacket in the passenger seat. Chloe shivers behind the wheel, blows cigarette smoke out the crack in the window.

They watch the house until all the lights go out and Chloe sneaks her back inside.

x.x.x

The more opportunities Max has to explore outside of Blackwell, the more she finds that Arcadia Bay isn’t quite the bastion of yesteryear, suspended outside of time, that her nostalgia portrayed. It feels almost unnatural to be sitting down for a hot beverage with a friend and _not_ be sliding into a booth at the Two Whales.

Where she and Kate are sitting now, tucked into one corner of a Starbucks identical to every other Starbucks she’s ever visited, it almost feels like they could be in Seattle, if not for the general quiet, if not for the lack of U-Dub sweatshirts, if not for the ‘Save Arcadia Bay’ environmental literature cluttering the corkboard by the entrance. Max had suggested they check out a cozy local establishment adjacent to a bookstore, which appealed to her more discerning side, but Starbucks had won out for its proximity to campus.

It doesn’t feel bad. Strange maybe, that a return to Arcadia Bay didn’t signal a return only to the familiar, that there’d be new experiences to be found here just the same as there had been moving away in the first place. But the unfamiliar didn’t have to be terrible.

Especially when, Max thinks sourly as her phone chimes in her bag for what must be the dozenth time, the familiar is becoming so stressful.

“Sorry, Kate,” she says, pushing her chai latte further in on the table so she doesn’t knock it over when she fishes her phone out. “I’m gonna turn on airplane mode.”

True to form, Kate seems unbothered by the interruption, all sympathetic smile from behind the steaming mug of mint tea cupped in her hands. “Is everything okay?”

Max pauses, debating, because the “yes” on her tongue feels too dishonest, but “no” feels too…severe. She opts for a shrug, smiling lopsidedly and hopes it’s reassuring enough. “Just girl drama.”

Kate raises an eyebrow and leans forward and Max realizes a moment too late what it must have sounded like.

“Not _my_ girl. Girls. Not that I have any. I mean, two of my friends are fighting and they’re girls and it’s…dramatic,” Max says, hoping that Kate, sweet understanding Kate, will catch on and leave it be. She sort of came here to talk about literally anything else.

“I’m sorry, Max. It must be really tough to be caught in the middle like that.”

 _The more the merrier_ , Max’s brain supplies, Rachel’s voice closely followed by her image in low light, lipstick smudged, long neck exposed, and there’s a thrill low in Max’s belly followed closely by shame. There shouldn’t be room in that memory for anything so tasteless as lust; it feels distinctly fucked up, getting turned on by something clearly intended to shake Chloe up. Especially when it had worked so well, especially when she knows that Rachel must regret it. It feels like if she were a better friend, this wouldn’t even be an issue. At the very least, it indicates a truly embarrassing lack of dignity. And yet.

She shakes her head, willing the blood not to rush to her face, and trips back into speech, hoping Kate won’t pick up on her stutter, or the way she’d stalled out for full seconds. “Y-yeah, it’s...honestly, I was only starting to get my bearings again with Chloe. It’s been so long, you know? And Rachel’s so nice but _so_ intimidating and I think we were just starting to find our dynamic. As a trio.”

Both Kate’s eyebrows go up, nearly obscured under her bangs.

Max knows in this way that she’s said too much, but it’s too late to go back, so she continues. “They had a fight a while ago. It...wasn’t pretty,” biting her lip, “and they’re both such big personalities. I guess I’m feeling a little small lately.”

Instantly Kate’s expression softens. “I think we all feel small sometimes. And that sounds like a lot. It’s okay if you’re a little overwhelmed, Max.”

As she’s speaking she reaches a hand across the small table they share, palm laying bare and open, and Max is surprised by how instinctive it feels to lay her own over it, how something so simple can feel so soothing.

If her smile feels a little lame set against the tumult inside her head, it’s still genuine. “Thank you. It means a lot, Kate, really. I’m glad to be reconnecting with my old friend, but making new ones feels great too,” Max says, and squeezes.

Kate beams back at her. “It does feel great, doesn’t it? I don’t want to pry, but if you ever want to talk, or just get away...Alice and I don’t ever mind visitors.”

Kate’s voice is soft like her hands and her voice is warm like mint tea and Max can’t imagine that she’d feel any safer in the dorms than she does now, so, “I’d love to come see your bunny! But trust me, you haven’t _seen_ prying. I can’t always talk about these things with my friends from Seattle.” She thinks it better not to mention Dana, knowing they’re friendly, not wanting to gossip.

It’s a little hard, at first, to find a way to talk around the details of the whole situation. It’s not that Max thinks Kate’s the type of girl that would turn a private conversation into gossip, especially having been subjected to the harshness of the Blackwell rumor mill herself — it’s just that, even though she’s been in the middle for so much of the fight, she still feels like so much of an outsider.

What Rachel and Chloe have is _intense_ and incredibly insular and apparently more fragile than she’d given it credit for to start. It had been one of the toughest parts of coming back to Blackwell: seeing just how much Chloe had grown without her, seeing what a huge part of her life Rachel had become. She’d been jealous, at first. Insecure.

It got easier, after she and Rachel had become friends. She felt less like a third wheel or some relic from Chloe’s childhood. Her presence had felt less like a novelty and more like a fixture.

And then everything had fallen apart. And, sure, it’s only been a week and Max can admit that maybe Chloe and Rachel’s dramatics had been rubbing off on her a little. But it was hard not to get a little swept up in everything. The best part of her life right now was suddenly ripped in half - she’s got a right to be a little dramatic, doesn’t she?

Kate’s sympathetic and sweet, like Max expected her to be, but Max still finds herself hedging. She realizes she’s holding back not just out of respect for her friends’ privacy, but because she’s scared that if she lets too much slip Kate will think less of them.

Kate Marsh, despite her reputation, is one of the least judgemental people Max has ever met. But Max is stricken, suddenly, with the realization that her desire for the three of them to be friends has gone from idle fancy to active pursuit, and she feels protective of the notion.

Still, even with the verbal acrobatics she’s doing to stay vague, the awkward starting and stopping, it’s a massive relief to finally talk about it. Max runs her mouth until her tea has gone lukewarm and the sky’s just starting to turn sunset pink.

Having finished her own tea in between all the active listening, Kate doesn’t seem annoyed in the slightest. “Honestly, Max, I admire you.”

Max wasn’t expecting that, shakes her head a little in disbelief. “Thanks, but—”

“Please bear with me. I promise I have a point,” Kate interrupts, for maybe the first time ever. “I just mean that...well, Rachel Amber practically rules Blackwell, and people talk about Chloe almost as much. Everyone knows who they are.”

“So you admire me for being friends with—”

“Max, _no_. Let me finish, please?”

And if Kate’s interrupting her twice in a row it must be important, so Max nods.

“I just mean,” Kate repeats, “that everyone knows who they are, but nobody really _knows_ them except each other. It must be really messy if they’re fighting, but...Max, you’re _such_ a good friend, and it sounds like they both really value you. I know I do, and I think that’s admirable. Being there for everyone like you are.”

Max hadn’t realized until just now that maybe that was exactly what she was looking to hear. It takes Kate saying the words for Max to realize that she had felt so insecure at all, a sense of recognition piercing the thing that had been weighing her chest down all week, letting the self-doubt spill out slow until the remnants are just tea leaves she can read.

Maybe if she was being dramatic it was only so she could make Rachel and Chloe see it, each of them too caught up in their war with the other to even wonder if Max was unsure of how much she had to give.

It feels good to be seen.

“Thanks, Kate,” Max says finally, knowing the words are painfully inadequate, but hoping that Kate can read the weight of Max’s gratitude in her voice, in the pressure from her fingers when she reaches across the table to squeeze Kate’s hands.

“Any time, Max,” Kate says warmly, squeezing back. “I really mean it.”

Max is sure that she does.

All the same, Max allows herself to hope that they won’t be having another conversation quite like this for a while.

As rough as things are with Chloe and Rachel right now, Max knows that they mean too much to each other for this to last forever.

They’ll get over it. They’ll talk it out. Things will go back to normal soon, Max knows it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i swear there's light at the end of this arc! in the mean time, we wanna know your thoughts, so please be a champ and leave us some comments.
> 
> as always our tumblrs are [holdsteady](http://holdsteady.tumblr.com/) and [explosionshark](http://explosionshark.tumblr.com/) and our ask boxes are open too!


	7. Accident Prone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chloe's slipping and Max doesn't know what to hold onto.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> blah blah blah we're late again etc etc
> 
> i think it's just gonna be like this, kinda. but we're going to get this thing done. thanks so much for everyone's who's stuck around.
> 
> trigger warnings for suicide ideation (past), self harm, and non-graphic discussion of injuries.
> 
> title from the song by jawbreaker (but also if you trust our music taste do listen to kick-flips by weatherbox)

It’s not the worst wipeout she’s ever had but it still fucking _sucks_.

“Oh shit, _oh shit._ ” And it must have looked bad too, because Justin’s freaking out.

Everything hurts and all Chloe really wants is to just lay unmoving on the ground for a little while longer, but she forces herself to sit up anyway, knowing that it’s her only shot at staving off his meltdown. “Chill out, chill out,” Chloe says, or tries to, words garbled by the gush of blood and drool that accompanies them.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Justin again and, okay, Chloe’s starting to share his alarm a little.

“Oh, gnarly,” Trevor skates past Justin and stops a few feet short of her. “You good, Chlo?”

Chloe ignores him, twisting a little to let more blood dribble out onto the pavement instead of down the front of her shirt. Gingerly, she slides two fingers into her mouth, feeling around. The pain is sharp when she grazes a bleeding wound on her tongue, but all her teeth are still in place. A few are a little wigglier than she’d like, and there’s a new jagged edge to the one right behind her left canine, but she’s confident that she can avoid the dentist and only be a little more fucked up for it.

She hooks her fingers and coaxes more thick, stringy blood from her mouth, shaking her hand out over the pavement. “It’s chill. Just bit my tongue going down.”

She rubs her fingers together, frowning at the gritty white bits of broken tooth she feels, and waits for the sex joke she’d just set Trev up for, but it doesn’t come.

“Dude, your arm,” Trevor says, gentle so she knows he’s worried, and kneels down at her side.

Justin hovers frantically in the background, wringing his hands and looking like he’s on the verge of a full-on panic attack. His brother ate shit _really_ hard here one time, a few years back. Broke his leg so bad the bone shot right up through the skin; recovery had been hard, and they had to put a rod in his shin that he’d never get rid of. Ever since then, even the mildest skate injuries tended to rattle Jusin’s cage. Chloe tries to be sympathetic but the dramatics remind her of Joyce in a way that leaves her feeling first guilty and then annoyed.

Trevor reaches out to touch her and Chloe twists away on instinct, hissing a little from the sharp flare of pain the sudden movement sends racing up her back. She takes a deep breath through the pain and rolls her eyes at the concerned look Trevor levels at her. “Stop being pussies. It’s fucking road rash, calm down.”

And, well, some of it definitely is. The spill tore a hole in the knee of her jeans all the way down to mid-shin and took some skin with it. There’d been a healing scrape on her knee from a few days ago that was reopened, leaking down her leg, looking particularly alarming against the splotchy purple bruises on her shins from too many flip tricks she’d botched earlier that day.

But that’s all kid stuff; she’ll dump some alcohol on it at home and it’ll take care of itself. It’s her arm that’s a little worse. She and Trevor send Justin up to the vending machines near the bathrooms to grab a water bottle so they can clean it up and also to give him something to do before he drives them both crazy. By now, they’ve amassed a small crowd of other skaters, a few of whom help Trevor walk her over to a bench when she realizes that she’d somehow managed to roll her ankle too on top of everything else. 

By the time Justin makes it back with the water, her arm’s bleeding worse. Trevor gouges a hole in the lid with his keys and directs a stream at the wound to wash off the blood. It hurts worse once it’s clean, but there’s something about seeing an injury that always makes it _more_ : more painful, more real, more interesting. Plus, that’s also when Trevor starts probing and poking at it to assess the damage, spreading the laceration open gently to see how deep it goes. Chloe watches, gritting her teeth through the pain and fighting back the dizzy sort of detachment she always feels when she sees the way the tone of her flesh changes on the way down, white to pink to red.

Probably not what her old school counselor meant when he said he wanted her to look within herself for the roots of her problems.

“Pretty deep, dude,” Trevor murmurs, letting go readily when she tries to pull her arm back out of his grip. “Could probably take some stitches.”

It could, yeah. But she’s not on David’s insurance and it’s not a bill she could cover herself. She’d _never_ hear the end of it from him if he or Joyce had to help her pay. “Fuck that. Anyone got any superglue?”

No one laughs, but they don’t argue, except Justin briefly before Trevor sends him and another kid down the street to the drugstore to pick up some bandages.

Most of the crowd disperses after that, but a couple dudes stick around offering beer and Tylenol and some good-natured ribbing. It’s a little risky; ABPD’s notorious for rolling the park on slow nights and it’s not like she’s in any shape to beat a hasty retreat if they show up tonight. But her whole body feels like it’s been fed through a wood chipper, so she accepts the booze in spite of Trevor’s pointed refusal.

She earns a laugh when she grabs two cans from the mini cooler they brought with them, one to drink and one to press again her ankle. Trevor sits down close and, heedless of the blood, makes her prop her elbow up on his shoulder to keep her arm elevated.

It’s still bleeding when Justin gets back but she shuts down the second suggestion of an ER trip even faster than the first time. One of the older skaters hanging around appoints himself field medic and steps in to help Trevor clean and dress the wound. The cut itself stretches from mid-forearm almost all the way up to her elbow and it hurts like hell when they flush it with alcohol and start gauzing it. A few more guys have wandered over to watch this part and one of them offers her a flask of something harder than the beer she’d been nursing up to this point. She downs it, fast, and knows the pain must have been showing on her face when the guy who handed it off doesn’t even look pissed to take it back empty.

“I was recording Pete, actually, but I think I got your wipeout in the background,” says Richie, after it’s finally done, reaching into his pocket and producing a phone. Chloe doesn’t really know him, he graduated a few years ahead of her. Last summer he and Justin’s brother got wasted and traded sloppy punches in Justin’s driveway during a party, some fight over a girl. “Wanna see?”

There’s not a way to say no that isn’t totally awkward, so she shrugs and agrees and everyone huddles up around the phone screen to watch her beef it.

It happens really fast. There’s Pete in the foreground, eeking out a shaky nosegrind on one of the low rails by the entrance and then she enters the frame in the background, a blur of blue and white, hangs a sharp turn toward the park’s biggest set of stairs and _massively_ overshoots them.

The impact is short and violent. They play it back a second time, a little slower, and it’s hard to see, but Chloe thinks she can make out most of the action. There’s where she slips off the board and rolls her ankle, there’s where her arm catches the edge of the railing and splits open, there’s where she tears her jeans and her leg open sliding on the pavement when she hits the ground.

Trev and the other boys wince and holler but Chloe forces herself to laugh and shrug, hamming it up while her fingers curl around the can at her ankle, going numb from the cold.

“Dude, what were you _thinking?_ ” one of them asks.

She hadn’t been. It’s a pretty deep set of stairs, and longer than anything else in the park. Mostly intended for grinding down the rail in the middle, or tricking off the thick concrete bannisters on the sides. And originally she’d just been cruising, contemplating rolling into the bowl on the other side of the park but when she’d come up on the stairs the rest had just _happened._

There’s no way to talk about it without freaking them out, without bringing everyone down, without coming off like a total basket case. They’d read this all wrong, think it was a different problem than it is.

The thing is, when Chloe had been younger, she’d wanted to die.

Well, what she’d wanted most was to just not exist, to not feel pain, but the thought of a death specifically had been so appealing: dramatic, cathartic, _final_ , and so it had become her chief fantasy. She can’t talk about this either, but it’s something most of the people close to her have worked out anyway. Not that she’d ever made it particularly ambiguous between the way she’d partied then, and the recklessness she’d committed herself to, and the graffiti she’d scrawled all over the bay declaring as much in varying degrees of explicitness. A fucked up, desperate version of the same way she got her parents to get her a cat when she was a kid, dropping hints with increasing fervor as she waited to be noticed.

As much as she’d thought that she wanted to die, she’d been terrified of trying, of fucking it up somehow, or of changing her mind last minute, when it was too late to do anything. Scared of what it would do to her mom, if she’d succeeded. Scared of going to hell, even though she was pretty sure she didn’t believe in it. But it’d be just her luck, right?

So, she’d stayed alive, as a matter of convenience, but she compromised with herself. Small hurts and a few bigger ones, nothing so bold as death but something that still soothed the ache for permanence inside of her, at least for a little while.

Max had been the first to find out, not long after she’d started, just a few months after her dad had died. They’d only been kids and she had _begged_ Chloe to stop. She still feels a sharp pang of guilt in her stomach when she thinks about it, Max’s small shaking hands in a vise grip on Chloe’s shoulders, the weakness of her voice, the tears in her eyes. So when she’d begged of course Chloe had promised. And it was one she’d tried to keep, but once Max was gone so was the incentive. There was no Max left to disappoint, so who gave a shit?

When Rachel had found out, fingers catching on one of the sharp, uniform scars marking Chloe’s thighs on that first clumsy, drunken night they’d touched each other, she hadn’t begged. She hadn’t reacted at all, like Chloe had feared, shivering in the dark with her heart in her throat. Rachel kept going and the night had become about something else, but the next morning she’d been blunt; it had to stop. There was no ‘for me’ tacked onto the end of the statement, she’d just said it like a fact.

They’d found other ways to let off steam. Rachel paid for her first piercing, her entire sleeve, the lip rings, all of it. More than that, she’d gone in with Chloe on everything; matching her piercing for piercing, tattoo for tattoo. Except for the nipple piercings, where she insisted Chloe go first and then pussed out immediately after.

The support, tactless and unflinching, the redirection of Chloe’s destructive energy, the new coping methods had all worked, though. It was hard sometimes and really hard the rest of the time, but Chloe hadn’t hurt herself deliberately in years.

But there’s a distinction between what Chloe had done before and the way she sometimes indulged those impulses now, that she doesn’t think anyone else would be able to appreciate. To hurt herself was one thing, and to allow herself to be hurt was another but she couldn’t deny the familiarity of the adrenaline rush, the satisfaction singing in harmony with the ache through her bones now that it was done. The way the sharp edge of emptiness yawning in her chest had been smoothed out by the new pain in her arm, her mouth, her ankle.

She hadn’t fallen on purpose, but when the impulse came, and with it the risk of pain, she had chosen to let it lead her.

Just like she’d gone out last night despite her good sense and gotten too drunk to sober up before her shift this morning, turned away by Bryce at the door who wouldn’t let her work intoxicated. The third unscheduled absence on her record this month.Just like she’d gone toe-to-toe with David yesterday when he’d started harping on her, instead of rolling over for him again, only being spared the back of his hand by Joyce getting home unexpectedly early and breaking things up. Just like how she’d stubbed out a lit cigarette between two fingers earlier without thinking, and had let them linger there in the burn for a few seconds too long.

It’s not the problem she used to have, but it’s close enough for the distinction not to matter to anyone else, she knows. It’s close enough to put a knot of hot shame in her belly when the relief starts to die off.

So she laughs and shrugs and knocks back the rest of her beer, finishing it off with a belch that earns her a round of laughter and a couple hearty slaps on the back. 

“I dunno,” she lies through a grin, reaching out and tapping the phone screen to start the playback again. “I thought I could make it!”

x.x.x

Max is just leaving the cafeteria, heading back to the dorms after dinner, when her phone rings in her pocket. Chloe’s name flashes across the screen, but when she answers, a male voice greets her.

“Max?” It’s Trevor, she recognizes after a second. She never really knew him well, even though he and Chloe had been friends since even before Max left. He’d been one of her first crushes anyway, cute and confident in that non-threatening way she liked boys to be, but still with that easy, reckless coolness she found embarrassingly attractive in most skaters. That short-lived schoolgirl crush had been briefly rekindled when she first came back to the Bay, but it had faded to a kind of dull fondness in the intervening months.

They didn’t really hang out, but Trevor was always nice to her in the halls, greeting her by name with a big smile and a fistbump whenever they passed each other. He always broke the tension whenever Justin did anything too awkward, and he’d even rescued her from Warren’s tone-deaf attention one day at lunch by crashing their table, offering Max a sly wink after Warren had given up and sulked away upon finishing his food.

They’re friendly, but that doesn’t mean getting a call from him so unexpectedly isn’t seriously weird. And the fact that it’s coming from Chloe’s phone has Max suddenly so _nervous_. “Hey, Trevor. Is Chloe okay?”

“Uhh,” there’s shuffling in the background, some low voices, “yeah, yeah, she’s alright. Like, pretty alright. Are you at Blackwell?”

 _Pretty alright_ is somehow not at _all_ comforting. “Yeah. What’s up?”

“So, I’d normally call Rach, but I know she and Chloe are like…y’know,” Trevor says and, yeah, Max knows. “But, like, I know you and Chlo are super tight, so. You think maybe she could crash in your dorm tonight?”

“Yeah, of course, that’s fine,” Max says and she means it, but her stomach is just _sinking_.

“Cool, thanks, we’re on the way,” Trevor says. “I’d let her stay with me, y’know, but Logan just got busted for having a girl stay over last week, and like, my parents would _kill_ me if I got in trouble again.”

“Trevor, what happened?” Max can’t help but ask, hoping she’s kept the panic blooming in her chest out of her voice. 

“She ate shit at the skatepark today and then got like medium wasted and now she doesn’t wanna go home,” Trevor sighs into the phone. “But, like, Max, I promise it’s chill. Nothing’s broken or anything.”

“Medium wasted?” Max asks.

“Light to medium. Patchy and a couple of his boys were drinking there and they were all like ‘let’s get a couple beers in ‘er to take the edge off’ and uh she was like ‘yeah,’ so,” there’s a long pause on the line, just the sound of the radio filtering through and somewhere way underneath that, Max thinks she might be able to hear Chloe’s voice. “Anyway, we’ll be there in five, okay? So can you meet us outside?”

It’s closer to fifteen minutes when they finally arrive, Trevor helping a limping Chloe down the path toward the dorms while Justin trails after them holding a pizza box. Chloe looks _rough,_ white bandage winding up her arm, jeans ripped, white tank top all dirty, scrapes and bruises all over. But she grins wide all the same when she catches Max’s eye, hobbling faster toward her. Max accepts Chloe’s hug gingerly, afraid of letting her hands settle anywhere that might hurt, but Chloe squeezes her tight and reckless and doesn’t flinch at all in Max’s embrace.

The boys walk Chloe to her room. Trevor stops Max in the hallway while Justin helps her get settled on Max’s couch.

“She said she wasn’t hungry on the way home, but you should try to get her to eat some pizza,” Trevor says, handing the box off to Max along with a plastic bag. “Uh, here’s what’s left from our drug store run. You should probably help her change the bandages like before bed or something.”

“Okay,” Max nods, fighting back the urge to ask him _exactly_ what had happened. Trevor’s been particularly sweet and helpful, and Max doesn’t trust herself to press for more details without her panic turning it into an interrogation or making it seem like she was blaming him for something he wasn’t responsible for.

Chloe’s a force of nature, Max knows as well as anyone. Beautiful and destructive and pretty much unstoppable. Whatever happened couldn’t have been Trevor’s fault.

“And, uh, Max,” Trevor glances around and leans in, a hand on her forearm. “You’re straight edge, right?”

“Um, not exactly,” Max says, never having found any particular appeal in the label. “But, I don’t drink or anything.”

“Okay, right on,” Trevor nods. “Um, just cause, like, she’s sobering up now, y’know, and she probably shouldn’t have anything else to drink tonight. I don’t think it’d help.”

And maybe Max is projecting. Maybe she’s imagining the tension in his voice, but she doesn’t think she is. It’s relief and dread all at once, this sudden realization that she’s not the only one that’s noticed Chloe slipping lately. That she’s not the only one that’s scared.

She reaches out without thinking, taking hold of Trevor’s sleeve before he can move away. He blinks, startled, but he doesn’t pull back.

“Sorry,” she mutters, letting go, pushing through her embarrassment, the warmth in her cheeks to finish what she started. “It’s just…has it been like this before? I wasn’t here. I never really saw…I never saw her get this bad. I don’t know what to do.”

Trevor winces in sympathy, set a hand on Max’s shoulder and squeezes. “Honestly, I haven’t seen her like this since before...y’know, before Rachel. Max, what happened?”

Part of her wants to tell him. Wants to push him further out into the hall, away from Chloe and Justin, and just spill her guts. It’s one of the strangest positions she’s ever been in, simultaneously feeling like she knows too much and nothing at all. It feels tense, combative, caught between Rachel and Chloe, drawn unwillingly into their fucked up relationship drama.

She never wanted to be in the middle of this. Even on her earliest, most unsure days back she hadn’t felt as much like an outsider, as much like an interloper as she does now. 

And Trevor probably knows more, as much as it twists her stomach up to think about it. He’s been _here_ while she was away and as nice as it is to say that she and Chloe had stayed friends through the years, there’s no way to deny that things had changed. She loves Chloe and she always has and their years apart hadn’t changed that at all but it _had_ created space. It let secrets bloom between them, viney and twisted and dangerous. Max is still trying to close the gap, to navigate her way back to Chloe’s side, but on nights like this it feels so impossible. So _hopeless_.

She feels choked by it.

But venting to Trevor isn’t going to be what fixes this. As much as she resents having to hold them herself, those secrets aren’t hers to give away. She trusts Trevor, trusts that he’s not out to gossip or make trouble, but that wouldn’t make a difference to Rachel or to Chloe.

Maybe they don’t trust her with everything that happened between them, but they trust her with this, and she can’t betray that.

She shakes her head and is relieved when all Trevor does is sigh and nod.

“Do you think they can work it out?” he asks instead.

“I don’t know,” Max says honestly, realizing how much it scares her to admit it. “I really hope so.”

The boys finally leave, Trevor shooting one last sympathetic smile over his shoulder before he slips out the door to the stairwell. Max waits a beat, then two, and turns back to her room, body heavy, shoulder leaning hard into the doorway. It’s the weight in her bones and the way her breath kind of stalls out in her throat when her eyes finally land on Chloe that keeps her stuck, half in the hall, with an ache in the back of her mouth to match the sick feeling that first bloomed during that phone call with Trevor and hasn’t left her since.

The light in Max’s room is dim, just the lamp on her desk and the fairy lights strung up over her bed throwing an anemic yellow glow across the room. Chloe’s still striking beneath them, all sharp angles and hard lines. The shadows playing across her face and the sullen twist of her features make her look so _gaunt_ , though. A dark bruise curls its way around her chin, and Max doesn’t even try to stop herself this time, lets her gaze trace its way down Chloe’s body without any of the bashfulness that’s been so woven into how it feels to look at Chloe since she got back.

She’s all long, lean limbs, muscle and sinew, so like she had been all those years ago, when Max had left her behind, and so not. So much _more_ now. Max had thought, more than once across the years, about Chloe’s body and if she would ever grow into those long, long limbs. And she has, mostly, less coltish now, almost graceful at times, but Max thinks that she’ll probably always be a little lanky. And it’s fine; she’d long ago given up on the errant, childhood hope that her own growth spurt was just around the corner, so she could finally meet Chloe’s eyes from up close without having to tilt her chin like ~~she was expecting a kiss~~ neck strain was a full time job.

Chloe’s too tall for the couch on a good day, on a day where her fucked up ankle isn’t dangling precariously over the edge of it, propped up by Justin with every pillow that had been on Max’s bed. And what’s more, her clothes look filthy and uncomfortable. Max’s gaze catches on a rusty brown dribble of dried blood down the front of her tank top, then a similar smear down near the hem, the same side as her bandaged arm and feels her heart slow down in her chest.

There’s more. There’s got to be more, even, than the bruises and cuts and scrapes peeking out from the holes in her jeans, following the curve of the heels of her palms like they could have just been painted on with a thick stroke of an artist’s brush.

She’s seen Chloe hurt before, of course. Chloe had taken to skating at her most awkward and ungainly and those early months were nothing if not an exercise in amateur first aid, in learning how not to freak out. And there had been Youth Hockey; that sprained wrist, those bloody noses, the bruises on bruises on bruises.

But there’s something in the stark whiteness of the bandage that winds its way up Chloe’s forearm, ending just under her elbow, that makes the lump in Max’s throat so solid it’s hard to breathe. There’s something in Chloe’s face, so pinched and _sad_ , the most despondent Max has ever seen her with a box of pizza in her lap, that makes Max want to drop to her knees there on the couch and cry and touch her lips to the scrapes on Chloe’s palms and ask _why_ ask _how can I help you not do this._

Then Chloe looks up, frowns when she catches Max’s gaze, before sighing and leaning back into the hard wooden armrest of the sofa and looking pointedly away and the fantasy falls away.

It wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t work out.

Max isn't sure what _would_ exactly, but she knows she has to start somewhere. 

“That can’t be comfortable,” she says, making her way over and gently easing one of the pillows out from under Chloe’s foot. She slips further up the couch, stuffs it down between Chloe’s back and the arm rest instead. “Better?”

Chloe doesn’t answer, just frowns harder at the pizza box in her lap and Max wonders where the easy, smiling Chloe that had loped her way into Max’s room twenty minutes ago had gone.

She waits and Chloe still isn’t talking so she tries again, does her best to keep the strain of it all out of her voice. “That looks good. Can I have some?”

Chloe sighs again, leaning back into the pillow and holds the pizza box out to Max.

“Thanks,” Max says, forcing a lightness she doesn’t feel into her words. The pizza is lukewarm and greasy in her hands. Eating has never been less appealing than right now, with this great big ball of lead in her stomach, but Max takes a bite. Chews and swallows. “Oh, man, Chloe, have some.”

Chloe does not. Instead she flips the lid shut and finally, _finally_ catches Max’s eyes. “You and Trevor were talking for a while.”

“Oh,” Max says around another dismal mouthful. It slides down her throat like glass. “Yeah.”

And before she can think of what else she can say to diffuse this… _whatever_ this is, Chloe’s rolling her shoulders, muscles tense, breathing out a lungful of air through her nose like she does when she gets pissed. “Talking about me?”

Max could lie.

She could deny it, she could make something up. Improv’s never been her strongest suit but a few ideas pop into her head: talking about class, gossiping about a classmate or a teacher, settling the pizza bill.

She could tell the truth, all of it. She could look Chloe straight in the eye and ask her what the _hell_ she thought she was doing and _how dare she_ and didn’t she see that she was scaring the shit out of everyone who loved her? Didn’t their pain count just as much as hers?

Either way is a fight.

And Max is too tired for fighting, and even through the tension in Chloe’s shoulders, the hard set of her jaw, the years of growth and pain between them, Max can still read her, knows she’s tired too.

So she compromises.

“Yeah,” and she shrugs, tries to make it seem like less of a big deal than it is. She sets the half eaten slice of pizza down on a napkin on her dresser. “I wanted to know what happened.”

“You could have asked me,” Chloe snaps.

It raises Max’s hackles, because she’s _worried sick_ and _exhausted_ and trying _so hard_ to be enough despite knowing she’s not.

But she pushes the anger back, because they’ll talk about it later, but right now the last thing Chloe needs is the fight she’s itching for.

“You would have played it down,” Max says, bluntly, softens the statement by dropping to her knees next to the couch, touches the tips of her fingers to Chloe’s uninjured forearm just lightly. “You don’t like me to worry.”

Whatever she expected in response wasn’t this, Chloe’s mouth twisting up and her eyes squinting shut and a sound that’s half a sob ripping its way from her throat. Max reacts before she knows what she’s doing, leaning forward gently, so gently, and wrapping her arms around Chloe’s shoulders.

Chloe leans in hard, so hard she almost topples off the couch, but it only takes a moment for Max to steady them, balancing their weight with her knees and her toes digging into the carpet. “Shhh,” she whispers into Chloe’s hair, letting her fingers comb through it like her mother always did for her when she needed to be held. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“I’m sorry,” Chloe chokes out, and this is how Max knows she’s still a little drunk. Tears and apologies are rarely the domain of sober Chloe. “I didn’t mean to…I always do this.”

“Do what?” Max asks gently, hoping it’s the right move.

Chloe sniffs and shrugs in her arms and when she goes to pull away Max sighs and holds tighter, until she stops trying. 

“Do what, Chloe?” she coaxes, humming into Chloe’s temple and stroking her hair again. Her body feels like it’s on autopilot. Like there was an entire conversation that must have happened between walking back into the room and this moment, something that would make all the pieces, this vicious escalation, make sense and she had somehow just blacked out for it.

But there wasn’t, of course, and it takes a few moments to parse Chloe’s response, soft and broken by hiccups and shuddering watery sighs, nothing at all like the strong clear tone Max has become accustomed to. “Make you take care of me,” is what Chloe murmurs against her neck. “Make everyone fucking take care of me. Turning myself into this...fucking burden.”

“Isn’t that what we always said we’d do? Take care of each other? Thick as thieves, you know, real...pirate stuff,” Max says, trying to keep her voice light as possible, weighed down as it is by the gravel settling in her stomach.

That makes Chloe cry harder, fisting her good hand in the fabric of Max’s shirt, and as is so often the case there’s little left to do but wait it out.

Max holds Chloe until her breathing evens back out and she finally pulls away with a wince. The angle for their extended embrace had been awkward and Max’s knees ache and her toes have gone numb and if Chloe’s sore now, she’s going to be so much worse tomorrow when all those aches have had a day to really set in and there’s no more alcohol in her system to dull them down.

She twists so she’s sitting more properly now, but still on the floor by the couch, legs spread out before her, parallel to Chloe, and wiggles her toes until the feeling comes back. She takes Chloe in again, deliberate this time, nothing subtle about it, wanting Chloe to feel the weight of her gaze, and asks as sweetly as she can if Chloe will please eat some pizza now.

Max barely even cares if it’s cheating, a little, when she knows that Chloe’s so sad and lost and full of love and apology that she’ll do anything that Max asks of her in this moment. It’s for her own good. There’s very little Max wouldn’t do, very few rules she wouldn’t break, if it meant something good for Chloe.

It’s a slice and a half and that’s not much, not when Max has seen Chloe inhale an entire large pepperoni on her own before, but it’s enough for tonight.

After the pizza, Max rises on shaky legs, gathers a change of clothes, and coaxes Chloe out into the dorm bathrooms. Rachel’s on both of their minds, Max knows, and maybe it’s a gamble to bring Chloe out into a shared space like this, but those bandages won’t change themselves.

In the buzzing fluorescent lights of the bathroom, Max unwinds the bandage as gently as she can. The gauze catches on Chloe’s skin despite Max’s best efforts and the wound bleeds again, bright red dribbling down her arm, shocking splatters stark against the porcelain sinks.

“Sorry,” Max murmurs, disturbed when Chloe just shrugs, not meeting Max’s eyes at all.

She doesn’t hiss or flinch when Max fumbles with her first aid kit, cleaning and redressing the wound with all the finesse of someone who’d taken two first aid classes at the civic center with her dad.

It’s fucked up, maybe, a little perverse, but Max thinks she’d feel better if Chloe acted like it hurt at all. All she can think about as she winds the bandage back up Chloe’s arm is the ugly, too-straight razor lines she’d uncovered on Chloe’s arms years ago. When Chloe’s wounds are all dressed and Max’s first aid kit is repacked, she finds herself hesitating, stroking the pads of her fingers down the insides of Chloe’s wrists, feeling for the scars she remembers stealing her breath away half a decade ago.

They’re gone, mostly, or so faint they barely seem to count. Faded with time. All but for the biggest one, less straight than the others, it dipping at the corner, hidden by Chloe’s bracelets most days. She presses down unthinkingly, expects Chloe to pull away, but she doesn’t. It’s worse, somehow. Guilt blooms unexpectedly in Max’s belly, but she doesn’t let go. Not yet.

Chloe just breathes, gaze locked over Max’s shoulder, and waits, perfectly still, until Max has felt enough and releases her wrists. She only moves when Max slips in close, presses her cheek into the hard line of Chloe’s shoulder. There’s something in the way Chloe’s arms wind around Max’s shoulder, the warm, slow exhale against the side of Max’s head that ruffles her hair. An apology, maybe. An ‘I love you too’ for sure.

It’s too much to stay while Chloe changes into the pajamas Max has loaned her, so she waits in the hall. When she feels the door swing open behind her, she only reaches back for Chloe’s hand, doesn’t turn and look because there’s something tense and fraught that they’re still bound up in and she’s afraid it will break in that exact moment if the sight of Chloe, soft and wounded, all wrapped up in Max’s clothes makes her want more than she should.

She just needs a moment.

Just a moment.

Chloe wants to share the bed—

Just a moment

—but Max insists, no, she’s hurt and she needs to stretch out and Max wouldn’t be able to relax anyway if she was afraid she’d reinjure Chloe in her sleep.

Max will take the couch.

When Chloe finally concedes, it’s more for Max’s sake than her own, but she at least has the good grace to not be obvious about it.

“Wait,” Max interrupts, halting Chloe as she reaches to unplug the fairy lights strung up over the bed.

Chloe hesitates, silent, gazing at Max across the bedroom and waiting for more.

A moment.

“Leave them on?”

She nods, slow. “Sure, Max.”

She doesn’t ask why.

On their own the lights are pitifully dim anyway. It doesn’t take her long to fall asleep despite them, exhausted from the day’s events, from the strain on her body from barely sleeping the rest of the week anyway.

She’s always said she sleeps better with Max in the room. When they were younger Max hadn’t really bought it, convinced it was just a line Chloe used to wring more sleepovers out of their parents.

But maybe she should have given her more credit. Chloe’s main tools had always been mischief, innuendo, and it had the unfortunate side effect of making her rare sincerity so subtle and surprising that it’s easy to miss.

Max’s eyes won’t stay shut, heart racing with nothing and no one to justify its frantic thrum. She can’t keep her gaze off Chloe, glowing soft, looking peaceful under the lights despite her cuts and scrapes and that heavy weight of sadness that hangs over her like a cloud.

She’s rolling off the couch and crossing the room before she knows what she’s doing.

There’s her camera on the desk, and she’s leaning down, kneeling on the floor, eyes through the viewfinder, searching for the right angle.

She must spend five minutes, maybe ten, even more, just looking. Trying to find the way to take the beauty of the moment and make it live forever in one shot, because one is an indulgence and more would spoil it all.

Every theory, every technique, every fact of composition she’s ever studied is flying through her head but none of them translate to this, to _right here._

She snaps the picture, finally, when she gets sick of fighting herself over it, when she realizes how far out of the moment she’s become by letting it fall into the abstract. How close she is to losing what made it beautiful in the first place.

Chloe doesn’t stir.

Max sets the camera back down on her desk silently, carries the developing film back with her to the couch.

She only looks at it for a moment before she tucks it away between the pages of the closest book within reach, gaze drifting back to Chloe in her bed.

The next thing she knows she’s blinking herself awake and there’s soft white light filtering through the slats of her blinds and Chloe’s still peaceful and asleep in Max’s clothes, in Max’s bed, right here.

And in the quiet of the morning Max lets herself want. Lets herself ache from it without feeling guilty.

She pushes out every thought of risk and loss and complication and lets her eyes drift shut and breathes deep against the sharp twinge between her ribs.

Chloe takes a lot, sometimes, but she’s worth it.

Max will be here, she’ll stay whatever Chloe needs, but right now she just needs a moment to herself.

X.x.x

On the long (too long) list of places Chloe’s woken up after a night of stupid mistakes, Max’s bed is one of the better ones. 

That doesn’t mean there’s not a moment of absolute stomach-churning panic when she first drifts back into consciousness, before the hangover cloud clears enough for her to remember how she got there. Still, her waking gasp is loud enough to attract Max’s attention, fully dressed and perched on the couch across the room, a notebook and an open textbook on her lap.

“Hey, sleepyhead.” Max’s voice is soft, and her smile is softer and it makes the frantic gallop of Chloe’s heart worse, actually, but not in a bad way.

“Hey,” Chloe croaks and winces. Her whole _body_ aches and her head is throbbing. She feels grimy all over and her throat tastes like something _died_ in it. She can’t even imagine how rough she looks.

“What time is it?” Chloe slurs, carefully tugging the pillow out from behind her head and draping it over her eyes. She stretches too recklessly, a sharp pain shooting up her leg from her ankle and she curses, glad it’s muffled by the pillow.

“Uh,” there’s a rustle of paper, and Max’s voice again, “Ten to one.”

“Fuck,” Chloe curses again, louder. She was supposed to be at work an hour ago.

“What’s wrong?” More papers and then the quiet thud of bare feet on carpet and then the pillow’s gently tugged away from her face. Max kneels on the floor by the bed and Chloe’s grateful and warm and she’d give anything to be anywhere else. Max’s gentle concern crashes into her with bruising force and Chloe gently tugs the pillow back over her face to protect herself.

“Nothing,” she mumbles into the cotton. It smells like Max’s shampoo.

“Can we skip past the part where I make you feel guilty for dodging the question and you just tell me what you actually mean?”

“You’re snarky in the morning,” Chloe protests weakly.

“It’s literally the afternoon,” Max points out, but Chloe feels her get up and move away. It’s a little easier to breathe in the space it creates. “Are you in pain?”

“Not really,” Chloe lies. Kind of lies. None of this is really going to hurt until she starts moving around.

“Then what’s up?”

“Forgot to text my mom last night,” Chloe says, peeking out from under the pillow, and it’s true, even if it’s a bit of a deflection. It’s one of many things that’s wrong, actually, but it’s one that’s easier to explain to Max than the fact that this is the third time this week she’s missed work for no good fucking reason and she’ll probably be fired and when David finds out he’ll lose his entire mind over it.

“Oh, don’t worry, I did it this morning,” Max says, off-hand, like it’s just casual. She fiddles with the blinds until the room darkens.

“You what?”

“I texted your mom,” Max repeats, slowly, stalking back over to the bed and gently ( _so, gently)_ pressing her palm against Chloe’s temple. “Did you hit your head last night?”

“No,” Chloe grumbles, batting Max’s hand away. She feels too greasy to welcome the touch, no matter how powerful the initial instinct to lean in had been. 

Chloe needs to shower. It's her first and most immediate problem. She doesn’t want to go home, doesn’t want to risk running into David or her mom, but there’s no way she can use the showers of a school she hasn’t gone to in a year. Staying over in a student's room is dodgy enough without throwing public nakedness into the mix. She wishes she had more friends, like real, normal friends, whose houses she could invade in a casual, no-strings way. She thinks about Rachel’s family’s house, just fifteen minutes out of town, and how she still has the spare key Rachel gave her last summer. She thinks about how the shower is big enough for three people and perpetually well-stocked, and how Rachel’s clothes are all her size and all mostly her style.

But that’s an even crazier idea than showering here at Blackwell.

No. She’ll have to go home. 

_Fuck._

“Chloe?” Max is still hovering over the bed, looking no less concerned than she had been when she was, what, _feeling_ for a concussion?

“Sorry,” Chloe mumbles. “No, I didn’t hit my head. I’m just spacing. Uh, thanks for texting Joyce.”

“No problem,” Max says with an easy shrug. She nips back across the room and rifles around in a bag on top of her dresser before coming back waving a bottle of water in Chloe’s face. “I only thought about it after I woke up, but she just seemed relieved so I don't think it’ll be a fight or anything. I explained you, uh, took a tumble yesterday and last night was a little hectic, but that you’re okay now. Here, drink this. There’s aspirin in the nightstand drawer.”

Chloe accepts the bottle wordlessly and unscrews the cap, biting her lip when the plastic digs into the raw skin of her palm.

Part of her is annoyed, wishes Max hadn’t said anything to Joyce at all. Wishes that she could somehow redo the last twelve hours in a way that kept everybody out of her fucking business, let her get back on her feet alone, sans witnesses.

The rest of her is so grateful she finds herself blinking back tears, feeling unexpectedly fragile and overwhelmed. She feels guilty for not thinking of her mother, and ashamed that Max is so much better at being someone’s daughter than she is, and frustrated with herself for fucking up even the simplest things.

The twelve hours she just spent in Max’s bed were probably the most restful she’s had in a month, but the exhaustion she feels now is woven into every fibre of her muscles. She slumps on the bed, squeezing the empty bottle in her hands.

And then Max is there, nudging Chloe over and wrapping an arm around her bare shoulders. She tries to pull away, but Max just follows her until they’re leaning uncomfortably far toward the wall.

“Don’t,” Max says gently and Chloe blows out a lungful of anxious air as relief sweeps through her.

“Sorry,” Chloe mumbles.

It’s quiet, for a few minutes. Chloe closes her eyes and sinks her weight back against Max, listening to the familiar sounds of Blackwell on a Sunday: distant voices from girls in the hall, birdsong from outside, faint music from the room next door.

She wonders if Rachel’s here, a few doors over. What time she woke up, what she’s doing, who she’s with. It takes a few moments longer than it had earlier in the week for it to start hurting, and the simmering anger in her belly is weaker than it had been before. Maybe that’s progress.

“I have to go home,” Chloe says at last, and Max squeezes her shoulder.

“Okay,” Max says. A beat, and then, “Can I come with you?”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” Chloe snaps, hot from her chest up to her face. The memory of Max and Trevor’s low voices from the hall last night, the way Max had approached her like some kind of wounded animal after they had left, rises up until she feels desperately pathetic and annoyed about it.

Max tenses and sighs heavily but doesn’t push Chloe away. “I know you don’t. But you’re my best friend and whatever last night was, it wasn’t really what I’d call a fun hangout, so I thought we could spend more time together today. But, whatever, if you’d rather be alone—”

This is how Chloe will lose her, she realizes, stomach clenching painfully, feeling cold all over.

It won't be a grief they're too young to bear crushing their bond into dust, it won't be five years apart in different states, it won't even be the wild emotional upheaval of walking in on your best friend fucking your other best friend and then one of those best friends sarcastically propositioning you for a threesome — _and still,_ still _, God, Rachel, what the fuck_ — it will be this.

It will be Max being good and sweet and thoughtful as ever and Chloe being wholly undeserving.

It will be Max taking care of Chloe and Chloe being an absolute monstrous bitch about it. 

And when it happens, when Chloe destroys that first, that last good thing she ever had there will be nothing left to do but confront that it's all her own fault. That the reason no one has ever wanted her and everyone she's ever needed is gone is simply that she doesn't know how to be good enough to keep them.

“Sorry, Max,” she chokes through a shaky breath. She wraps a hand around Max's arm, lets the contact of their skin ground her for a moment. “I'm just…”

She's so sick of apologizing. She's so sick of having to apologize. She's so sick of herself.

“It's okay,” Max says and she _means it_ , Chloe knows, but she shouldn't.

She's so sick of being forgiven.

“I'll make you lunch after I shower,” Chloe promises. “Or, if David's there, I'll take you out.”

“You don't have to—”

“Let me,” Chloe insists, hating how her voice shakes. But Max just nods and leans hard into Chloe’s side for a beat before she gets up, moves to her closet to find something for Chloe to wear on the bus ride over.

It's quieter between them after, and Chloe knows Max is being careful. She's caught, once again, in the agonizing no man's land between gratitude and resentment. 

She stews in it on the bus, weighs the pros and cons of picking another fight, just getting it all over now so she can start picking up the pieces early. But every time she catches Max watching her from the corner of her eye, face so full of tenderness, she just feels weak and ashamed and so desperately needy the fight drains right out of her.

It would be better for Max, probably, to give up now. Start moving on. 

But Chloe's nothing if not selfish and when Max leaves she really will be all alone and she's just not ready.

Not now.

If Max can sense the gloominess rolling off of her, she wisely chooses not to comment on it. They travel mostly in silence, Chloe leaning down to share an earbud with Max, some coffee shop indie band Chloe doesn't know.

In a rare stroke of luck, both Joyce and David are out of the house when Chloe and Max finally get there. Max makes herself at home in Chloe's bed, the kind of weird parallel that sets Chloe's heart thumping in her chest before she forces herself out into the hall, the bathroom, the shower.

She wants to linger. To hide there under the spray until the world dissolves and reforms gentler and kinder and better suited to her, but she can't stop thinking of Max in her bed and so forces herself through the movements, mechanical.

The mirror is harder to escape. Chloe finds herself trapped there after, a prisoner of her own reflection: scrapes and bruises and ink and skin and scars.

She settles two fingers against a clavicle, lets them drift down to the spot just below her belly button, stops. She looks and feels so alien to herself. Some desperate, bony creature, bottle blue hair clinging to her neck and forehead. Brown now at the roots, the charade exposed. Rachel had been wheedling Chloe to let her do a touch-up. There’s a bottle of unopened dye in her dorm room right now, Chloe knows, because the pictures Rachel sent her the night she picked it up are still on her phone.

Who is she fooling, though? Who had she ever fooled?

When the impulse to throw open the drawers beneath the sink and take David's clippers and just cut it all off hits her, she knows she's spent too long alone.

Max is still waiting in the bed in that easy, terribly patient way she has, flipping through an old Nancy Drew mystery paperback. She doesn't even act annoyed as a joke, no _did you get lost_ s or _took you long enough_ s, just gets up to help Chloe change her bandage again.

Max hisses when the wraps fall off and Chloe struggles not to flex her arm on instinct, cool air sewing gooseflesh on the tender skin.

“That bad, huh?” Chloe murmurs, chancing a look down.

Yeah, not pretty. But she's had worse.

She knows better than to say so, not with Max looking that squeamish already.

“Turn your head,” Max instructs gently, fingers on Chloe’s jaw guiding her away. “It hurts less when you don't look.”

This is the one kind of pain Chloe thinks she could handle more of, but the weight of her past broken promise to Max sits too heavy on her tongue to let the admission slip out. She goes quiet, stares past Max’s shoulder and focuses on keeping still and pliant.

“Your hair's getting long again,” Max murmurs and when Chloe looks up the expression on her face is so unbearably soft that it sends her gaze dancing immediately away again, settling on an overturned beer bottle in the corner.

“Needs a trim,” she says, although truthfully it's a tough thing to care about right now.

“Remember how long it was when we were kids?” Max finishes wrapping the bandage, but doesn't move away. She sets down the tape and the scissors and runs her fingers through Chloe's hair again and again and this time Chloe isn't strong enough to resist leaning into the touch. “So long. All the way down to your butt.”

Chloe does remember. She'd always hated getting haircuts, sitting in a chair so long while some strange lady fussed around with her head. Her parents had never really cared enough to force the issue and so it had just grown.

“God, what was I thinking?” Chloe wonders aloud, trying to imagine herself as that kid again. The urge to cut off all her hair returns, but dimmer now. Faint in the way she thinks it’d be nice to grab a turkey club from the deli by the high school, not the burning, consuming itch it had been earlier.

“You weren't, really,” Max’s voice is quiet and steady. Her fingers are still gliding through Chloe's hair, gently untangling the knots she finds. “That was the cool part. Neither of us were. Isn't it crazy to think about sometimes? Just how little we cared about stuff like what our hair looked like or who else wanted to hang out with us or…”

She trails off, and Chloe watches, fascinated, as the skin between her freckles pinkens slight and slow like a sunrise coming on.

“When your hair was long,” Max starts over and Chloe can't even bring herself to be disappointed that she won't hear the rest of whatever Max had been thinking. She's still transfixed by the sound of Max’s voice, the light scratch of her nails against Chloe's scalp. “Remember when we'd go swimming? And your hair would fan out and you looked so…wild and…and mystical. I'd pretend you were a mermaid sometimes. Like Ariel, but cooler.”

Chloe feels herself start to blush too, but can't bring herself to pull away from Max enough to hide it.

“Just me?” she asks, startled by the sudden lowness of her own voice.

“Well, yeah,” Max admits. “My cool, badass mermaid friend.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“I was a badass mermaid and you were…?”

“Oh.” That sunset creeps a little higher, a little brighter and Max's gaze shifts to the tattoo on Chloe's shoulder. “Same as I ever was. Just ordinary.”

This isn't the first time Chloe's wanted to kiss Max, not by a long shot, but it's the first time that stopping herself makes her whole chest feel like it's about to cave in.

This idea that everyone else she knows is special or interesting or unique and she's just _not_ has always been one of Max’s most backwards and persistent hang-ups.

Max is so many things, dozens upon dozens of things, and “ordinary” isn't even remotely close to any of them. It makes Chloe’s jaw set hard. It makes her want to lean up and to take Max’s face in her hands and kiss her and kiss her until what Chloe knows pours out of her mouth, fills up all gaps in Max’s body and sinks into the marrow of her bones: that Max is special, truly special, and it's absolutely criminal she doesn't _know_ that already.

What she does instead is sigh and lean forward til her arms are around Max’s waist and her forehead’s pressing into Max's abdomen and whisper, “I missed you so fucking much.”

Max breathes in, quick and hard, and _shudders_ and it's so raw so intimate that Chloe's whole body is instantly on fire. Then Max is cupping the back of Chloe’s head and tipping her back just a little until their eyes meet and—

Chloe could have this right now, if she wanted to.

That look in Max's eyes is something Chloe would know anywhere. It's wanting and permissive and ready. Practically a request. All it would take, she knows, is for her to raise herself up just a bit and lean in and then it'd be happening.

It wouldn't even be the first time.

Chloe could kiss her right now and change everything and ruin everything and just throw it all away now because what Max thinks she wants and what Chloe really is just aren’t the same things. Kissing someone has never kept them closer to her, despite her best efforts and most ferocious hopes.

None of the usual things that seem to work for normal people have ever kept anyone closer to her.

It hadn’t worked with Rachel, whose keenness at first made Max’s soft hopefulness look weak by comparison. Rachel, who had sworn to her in the dark that nothing had to change, that nothing could ever supplant their friendship. Rachel, who lied, or at least broke promises she had no business making.

And Chloe doesn’t think it will make a difference, really, that where Rachel was coy and calculating Max is guileless and sincere — the end will be the same. Chloe’s love is the suffocating kind — or maybe it’s cavernous instead. It’s both. It crushes and smothers and it is hungry and empty; it takes and it kills and it destroys.

So, Chloe could kiss her now. And Max would kiss her back. And maybe they could date, for a while. Chloe could try to be the thing that Max needs, but the end will come just the same. The roots will show through. Even if they last the five months left of the school year, even if Chloe manages not to fuck up for that long, it’ll all be over when summer arrives. Max will leave again, for college this time. For a career, for a _real life_ and Chloe will be alone, alone, alone and it will sting even more because she’ll know _exactly_ what she’s missing and there will be no one left to pick up her scattered pieces.

So she breathes slow and closes her eyes and drops her head forward and the moment passes over them like a cool breeze, shivers shooting up their spines and little else to show for it.

“I think I owe you lunch,” Chloe speaks into Max’s stomach, hates the way she can _feel_ the disappointment settle over Max’s shoulders like a physical thing, a ratty old blanket, a thrift store cardigan two sizes too big.

“That would be good,” Max says, weakly, and shuffles back finally. Chloe lets her go and feels colder still. “You must be starving.”

Oh, she’s got no idea.

No idea. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof! right???
> 
> our tumblrs are [holdsteady](http://holdsteady.tumblr.com/) and [explosionshark](http://explosionshark.tumblr.com/), come yell at us about what jerks we are


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